plaid was a show that i was looking forward to, and had planned around, so the weather was a necessary peril, and i had to just deal with it. i was hoping to get in a little early and maybe find some legal marijuana, as well as set up a bank account with a driver's license that i don't have yet, but that wasn't available, yet. so, instead, i ended up dragging myself through the cold for a still pretty early entry, around 22:30. that meant that i missed most of dave shettler's set.

i actually like ambient music, and i've enjoyed his sets before; i think maybe what i missed was very similar to something i had caught while on edibles during plug, based on the similarities at the end. i intended to catch the set, i was just late through a cold walk.

i would have caught the 8:30 bus if i would have just gone to the bus station to get tickets, but i was apprehensive about my payment method and the only store i was sure took the prepaid mastercard and sold tickets was shoppers. so, i took a mild detour to the shopper's around the corner, only to find out that they don't sell tunnel bus tickets - surprisingly. so, i went down to the shopper's at ouellette, another detour around the greyhound station, only to find out that they closed at 20:00! it was around 20:40. so, i checked the convenience stores and asked around and was left with the only remaining option being the station itself, which was thankfully open. so, i started off by touring around in the cold for an extra half hour, and was already pretty cold by the time i got over the border.

and, then i walked to marble, which was a colder and lengthier walk than i remembered it being. see, i've been on my bicycle through detroit for months, and it's not far on a bike up to trumbull & grand. it's a hefty walk, though. it was just too cold to bike and end up anywhere, presentable. but, i still haven't fixed my tube, yet.

it took roughly an hour, an hour spent consuming a lemonish liquid while juggling cigarettes, and with neither hat nor gloves, through -15 C windchills, although the ambient temperature itself was merely hovering around zero. it was like a blizzard without any actual snow. i knew i was getting in somewhere, but that could have been a dangerous night to get stuck out in.

i was happy to find a heater to warm up beside when i got in, found some pot, and found the set ending right when i was about to start listening. as mentioned, it sounded familiar to me, so it was no doubt part of the set he played there behind plug.

the next thing up was daedalus, who i knew nothing about other than that they were on ninja tune, and that that's a label that i have some healthy respect for - they tend to release interesting music. there was a discussion about how to classify it, but i didn't find it that daunting - it was a kind of dubstep/idm. i found it moderately interesting, and might check out some more of it if the opportunity arises.

this is a few years old, but it's not dissimilar:

plaid was kind of really plaid, it's almost like they were more plaid than plaid. if i could imagine what a plaid show would be like, it would be pretty much that. an interesting quirk to the show was that they had a live violin player playing segments of sound that were then cut up and manipulated into loops, in real time. so, what you were actually experiencing was often this group of like sound engineers messing with live sound. sonically, it was kind of very plaid - a mix of lush atmospheric ambience with jittery and sometimes plodding beats, along with some strategic melodic programming. if you always wanted to experience plaid, that was exactly what the show was.

a plaid fan youtube site seems to have a recent set from istanbul that appears to be very similar to the detroit set:

however, this is the only footage that i could find of the live violin player:

there was a dj afterwards that allowed for some dancing.

this bar is hit and miss in terms of closing times. they're sometimes open until the afternoon, and sometimes closed at 3:00. i was hoping to stretch this night out a little so that i could just go straight to the tunnel, but they were shutting the place down by 3:01. so, i had to find somewhere to eat.

first, i had to get to my jacket, which i left outside the bar and required a small journey outside to retrieve. this time spent outside in a tshirt should not have been particularly damaging to me, given that the temperature was still hovering around freezing, but with the windchill the cold was flat out dangerous, so i actually had to stop there for a few minutes and warm-up before i carried on. i ended up with a small amount of frostbite on my left thumb, but i can't tie it directly to that moment.

it was still only 3:30 at that point, roughly two hours earlier than i wanted it to be, so i had to make a choice to go to the diner, with the hopes that they'd allow me to eat there. it's a funny thing, actually - the diner was an entirely different experience, all of a sudden. rather than handing everything out via takeout, they actually had two servers that were taking orders, like an actual restaurant. i ordered some bacon & eggs, got a refill on the coffee, and paid the bill without experiencing any negativity at all. i hope that this is indicative of future experiences at the diner.

hey, i don't recall ever starting any trouble at this place, and all i ever wanted out of it was some breakfast, and maybe a place to sip coffee and/or doze off at while i'm waiting for a bus or a show. the premise of my reaction was that i was taken aback by the hostility and ultimately didn't understand it; the preferred outcome is to annihilate the hostility as counter-productive to everybody's interests, but first to understand the causes of it, and try to determine if they're rooted in factual perceptions or not. for example, if somebody thought i was a prostitute, that would be false. we haven't got there yet, and maybe we never will, but if the issue just evaporates, that's fine, too.

by the time i'd finished the refill on the coffee, i'd actually missed the early bus. but, i caught the second bus back in, and had to stop for timmy's on the way back - i just needed some warmth for my hands. and, i had no choice but to shower almost immediately, to counteract the onset of hypothermia - a shower that it took me some time to warm up in, despite the scalding temperatures.

after warming up, i actually slept nicely until late in the afternoon.

so, i was up at about 3:30 on monday morning, finished the writing, did some errands in the afternoon, made a large meal to give me energy for the next few days, took a long shower and got ready to get out.

i took the 1:30 am bus on tuesday morning, got to toronto at 6:30 sharp, had to blow a few hours, got the first part of the filing done very early, was done serving by 11:00 and got the certificate of service in before noon. i then bought some drugs and went to hang out in the library for a few hours. i couldn't find a seat when i came back in from a smoke, so i was out to the second part of the night earlier than intended, around 15:30. i decided to just go down to the bar a little early for an early beer...

the initial plan was to catch a local guitarist - sean pinchin - play from about 18:00-21:00, have a few cheap beers while i was there, and then go to the bovine sex club for the rest of the night to watch some psychedelic rock bands (headliner: goon), before getting pho at about 3:00 and catching the bus out at 8:00.

but, beer is expensive in toronto. in windsor, beer runs around $3.50-$4.00, cdn. beer in detroit is $2.00-$4.00 usd, which is still only $2.50-5.50 cdn.  in toronto, $7.00 cdn is considered cheap, and people don't seem to like it when you complain about it. so, i wanted to go to what i thought was a dive bar to get some cheap beer early, but came up against a $7.00 beer that i just didn't budget for. i mean, maybe there's places in windsor with $7.00 beer, but they'd be full of middle class bourgeois types that i wouldn't like very much and i'd have so little interest in going to them that i don't even know where they are. even that spot across from phog that i complained about is selling tall boys for $6.00, not pints for $7.00. if i walked into a bar in windsor and they tried to charge me $7.00 for a pint, i'd just laugh at them and go somewhere else.

as it is, upon bitching about the price, i was informed by the bartender that i could get a beer for $3.50 down the street, so i took a walk to save a few dollars, and hopefully turn one beer into two. that's just smart fiscal management. clearly.

listen: it's not like i was just being cheap. really. i had a fixed sum to work with, which was down to $43 at this point. if i spent all of my money on an expensive $7.00 beer, i'd just run out of it in a few drinks. then, i'd be stuck in toronto until 8:00 with no money and no alcohol and nothing to do. that's not a question of being cheap, it's a question of being stupid. when you have a fixed amount of money to work with, you have to be smart about how you're spending it - and spending $7.00 for a single beer would just not be very smart. if i was working for the government, i could just print more; i'm not, so i have limits i have to abide by.

but, this bartender at the spot i thought was a dive bar but wasn't....he didn't like me after that. this was a middle-aged white guy with facial hair (and, you know you're special when you hit 25 and still insist on facial hair. lol.) that probably leaned pretty far to the right of the political spectrum, if you can judge a middle-aged white guy by his facial hair, and you usually can. so, my cheap beer at the early show at the dive bar idea failed in a few different ways....it turned out to be expensive beer amidst what was really a rather undesirable crowd of right-wingers that still believe in upholding class (!).

the cheaper beer (it was sill $3.50) was at a place called 'wide open', which started to pick up quite a bit after 17:00. see, i liked the cheaper beer, but the music in the place was truly awful. i'm just not going to want to sit around and listen to bon jovi. sorry.

so, i went back to the not-actually-a-dive-bar, talked the bartender into a $5.50 beer and caught the guy play the first part of his set.

i wasn't actually sure what to expect - it was advertised as a juno-nominated blues guitarist, and i was just waiting for the show at the bovine to start, anyways, so i wasn't that invested.

but, he actually did a lot of finger-picking, and it was broadly instrumental, in scope. so, i found myself enjoying the music in a more detailed way than initially expected, enough that i decided to close my eyes for a bit to float off into it.

uch-o. that's against the rules, apparently. tough guy bartender with the facial hair didn't like that, and asked me to leave for "sleeping at the bar" - an egregiously false claim that anybody in the room would immediately identify as such. rather, i think it's clear enough that he just didn't think i was wealthy enough to hang out there...

so, i sent the guitarist the following message, over facebook, when i got home:

so, i tried to check out your set on tuesday. and, it was a good set, from what i caught of it.

i was in town to do some filing at the court house; i live in windsor. i'm suing the cops for a warrantless arrest that shouldn't have happened, if you're curious. so, i caught the 1:30 bus from windsor in the morning, and everybody drinks on the greyhound, right? i was halfway through a long day full of lots of alcohol and marijuana, and i wasn't going to get home to shower until the next day...

what i said to the bartender was true i am a guitarist (you can check me out by clicking through the links), and i actually have a little bit of training in renaissance classical music, but i'm mostly a psychedelic blues guitarist. so, i like guitar music, and i was enjoying your set. i often enjoy listening to guitar music with my eyes closed, so i can experience it in three dimensions, in the context of the fret board. it's not exactly synesthesia, it's more of a math thing (i also have a math degree), but it's how i dig it. some people wanna get up and clap and dance; i want to close my eyes and space out. that should be fine, right?

but, i couldn't finish your set because they threw me out for "falling asleep at the bar", which is just an empirically and factually false analysis of the situation. i can be drunk and close my eyes and enjoy your set without falling asleep.

but, so what if i *was* falling asleep? beer in toronto is about twice the price of beer in windsor, and that caught me off guard, so i had to readjust my budgeting. i had $40 to get me through the night, period. but, i had bought a beer and was intending to buy another one. you'd think you're entitled to a complimentary nap after paying for two beers, right?

the impression i got from the bartender was actually that he interpreted me as too lower class for his establishment. and, i mean, that's his opinion, if he wants to be like that...

the point i'm trying to make is this: i came to see you play, and the bar threw me out. no, i don't have a lot of money, and, yes, i was kind of drunk, but i was legitimately interested in your art. the reality is that you're a dirty roots guitarist. correctly or not, i may have come off as a poor drunk, but in the sense that that was true, i'm your audience - those guys in suits aren't.

how many other people are going to show up there to see you and get thrown out because they're too drunk or don't want to pay $7.00 for a beer?

so, i'm writing you as an artist to ask you to question whether you think that's a good place to play at or associate yourself with. it's clearly not a sustainable weekly gig. but, are you hurting yourself more than helping yourself?

if you were playing on the sidewalk for change instead, nobody would have chased me off.

==========

and, i'd just leave the situation at that.

i didn't pay cover to get into this place, and it wasn't my intended destination for the night; i just stopped by for a beer or two, and i was planning on leaving within an hour or two. further, i did catch the first half of the set. so, being asked to leave did not affect my night very much.

i may suggest that the bartender is a bit of an asshole, but there wasn't a lot of point in getting upset about it. rather, my reaction is more along the lines of that i don't particularly want to go back to this place, and would plead with people that are in the neighbourhood to choose to play somewhere else, instead. i would choose to avoid that place by choice, next time i'm around.

so, after buying a $3.50 beer and a $5.50 beer, i'm down to $34, and i'm out of smokes. the cost of cigarettes in toronto? $11. and, i know it's $10 for cover, taking me down to $13 for the night.

it's a good thing i didn't buy that $7.00 beer, right? but, the beer at the bovine wasn't cheap, either - i paid $5.50 for a can, and then had to hang on to the rest of the change in my pocket, in the hopes that i'd be able to get something to eat.

my comments regarding the first three acts are actually the same, namely that they each had moments, in their own ways, that were dragged down by an insistence on returning to a poppier aesthetic. in all three cases, i found myself wondering why they'd go back to the saccharine over and over, when it just wasn't working, but maybe i'm missing a trend, or something, i dunno; i know that that was the commonality here, and i don't actually think there's a lot else worth taking much note of.

the first act were highly impressed by the sound tech's suggestion of turning the amp down during sound check, but i actually think they got quite a bit more grit out of the amp than the monitors would allow for. put another way: the monitors gave them more of a "solid state" type 80s rock sound, which they seemed to prefer over their crappy 90s analog pedals. i liked that creamy, sustained muff tone better than the brittle-digital-distortion-through-fender-jazz tone he fixed you up with, guys. but i kept quiet. *shrug*.

they're just kids. they know not...

sicayda were enjoyable as a gaze act, but, as mentioned, they kept going back to these poppy sections that just left me scratching my head.

and, i'll say the same thing about goon, who were almost an interesting psych act, but just couldn't leave the pop at home, in los angeles.

i will acknowledge that i had what i believe i am correct in calling an anxiety attack near the start of the goon set, which required me to cheat hypothermia in stripping down to my tshirt in order to sweat something out that i had breathed in a few minutes earlier. somebody was looking to kill their joint. i'll always take it if nobody wants it, but it took me up past some thc blood level concentration point and forced me to process it, in the way i know how. then i was fine, as always.

if you were to ask me, i would suggest that goon need to decide if they're a psych act or a pop act, but the kids might give you another story.

the place cleared out almost entirely after goon, but they did have one more act, which was even catchier and didn't really have the moments that the first three did. this was definitely more in a new wave or post-punk tradition, so i'm not surprised to realize that they're a little older. i like this general style, but i need something more abstract than this.

then, it was like 1:00 and they were done.

as mentioned, i had $9.00 on me, and i wanted to save it to get something to eat. i just underestimated the cost of everything. if i had saved an extra $4-5 by paying a little less for pretty much everything, i would have bought another beer; conversely, if i had an extra $20, i would have bought another beer. but, i just misbudgeted, and was kind of stuck.

my options were to go sit in a diner for the next 6-7 hours or hang around at the bar until 3:00, with the hopes that a conversation might open up....and then sit in a diner for 3-4 hours. it seemed like an obvious choice. but, this bar - which i hadn't been in before - was actually kind of a couples bar, after the bands had cleared out; there were lots of people there, but they were pretty much solely in units of two. again, this is abnormal for the kinds of places i go to, which tend to be less about going on dates and more about hanging out. i don't know when i'll be in toronto next, but i'll keep that in mind...

the people were at least friendly. mostly.

so, i was approached by a bassist/singer in a few local bands that seemed intent on telling me bad jokes, and arguing with me over the value of recorded music. and, i won't post her links here, but it demonstrates that the place was friendly enough, even to a stranger from out of town there accidentally on an unofficial couples night.

it wasn't quite 3:00 when i left - i didn't make them throw me out - but it was close. and, off i went for pho...

.....which i knew would be cheap, but how cheap? $9.00 cheap? it turns out, not - it was $11.00 cheap, but not $9.00 cheap. so, i went looking for a sub, instead...

....and, i found one, but i would have had to eat it outside, which i balked at.

instead, i got a sausage from the truck outside for $4.50 and a coffee at the denny's, and hit the internet where i read the news for a bit. but, i didn't want to fall asleep and miss the bus, so i went back to the bus station to type there....

...and learned that they shut down all of the outlets at the greyhound. yeah. well, it didn't click at first - i went from outlet to outlet and finally found one in the basement, before the cops came down and threw me out, for reasons that i couldn't understand.

i had two dollars on me at the end, and went looking for a bag of chips, when it clicked - they've installed charging ports. aha.

it would be one thing for them to install quick charging ports as a convenience for people with fast phones, but it's another thing altogether to actually disassemble the electrical plugs, to stop people from charging. my chromebook is misbehaving, so i can't charge it right now. but, it doesn't have usb charging, anyways. so, they're taking away something without fully replacing it.

and, they didn't have outlets on the bus, either, so i just slept on the way home....

*shrug*.

i was home at about 15:00 on wednesday afternoon, ate, showered and passed out until early in the morning.

next time i go to toronto, i'll need to bring a few extra dollars - or, if i don't have it, reschedule until i do. it was a difference of about $30.

but, i did the filing that i needed to do, which was the point of the trip, and i didn't not enjoy the show, for what it was.

so, what happened on thursday?

mindful of the impending yearly catastrophe that canadians call winter, i did a large amount of grocery shopping on hallowe'en (which wasn't so bad weather wise, at least at first.) with the intent to allow for minimal foraging until the end of the month, while hoping for the opportunity to take advantage of a nice day or two, mid to late month. i knew i was going to have to get out to toronto at some point but i had no intention of getting to any concerts in the region until closer to the end of the month.

but, my laptop crashed on the night of the third (corrupt boot sector. lengthy but easy fix.), which gave me several days to sort through the listings for the month, and i pulled out a night i couldn't miss out on. would you skip this night?

detroit component:
early evening show: tchaikovsky's first piano concerto at the orchestra hall
evening show: black midi, which are a noise rock band from the uk that has worked with damo suzuki

windsor component:
late show: lushh, which are an electronic jazz band from kalamazoo
potential late late show: heart attack kids, which are a punk band from london, on

that's a stacked night. i couldn't miss it.

but, i missed it. this is what happened...

i was running a little late as it was, but when i got to the bus station in windsor, the attendant informed me that the tunnel was closing for the night. what that would mean is that i'd have to find a way to get back over the bridge after black midi and, even if i could figure it out, i'd blow the late shows. it just wasn't worth it. alas...

so, i just stayed in windsor, which meant i caught the early show at phog, and then the late show at phog and then the late late show at meteor (and then went back to phog for a beer).

lushh were passively enjoyable, but i actually didn't find them to be mind-bending in any particular way. i didn't want to just go home after coming face to face with the bus situation, so i stayed. but, i wouldn't actually go out of my way for this. it tended to drag a little with superfluous space-filling solos that actually weren't that great, creating a large amount of empty space that was often not taken advantage of as well as it could have been. i tend to pay more attention to guitarists, but it was the drummer that tended to carry them. he didn't seem that interested in the idea of aphex twin remixing queen, though; he treated the proposition like i was proposing some kind of infidelity. or, maybe that was masking a physical attraction that he didn't know how to grapple with. hey, that happens. i'll back off, but offer's open...

it's not like it was a bad show; if you get the chance, you should take the time to give it a few minutes. you'll note that the particular link i'm posting is a bit more guitar-focused (and also very recent), so it actually kind of demonstrates the point: it just didn't quite get off the ground, for me. i need a bit more than that to really get into it.

but, i would choose not to skip them a second time, just in case.

i ran across the street after the set to catch what was left and was kind of baffled by the energy, which i was not expecting. i'm actually not 100% certain what i even saw at all. what i was expecting was a kind of rootsy mid-period whites stripes kind of thing, but they showed up with a bassist and a female drummer (i think she was the drummer for wine lips, as she was using the wine lips kit) and just tore the place down. they introduced themselves as the heart attack kids, but this was not the same band. so, was it also the bassist for wine lips? is there some merging going on here?

it's been a while since i heard something quite like this, which actually had some nirvana-ish undertones in all of the right ways. like i say, it just ripped.

but, this is an emergent phenomenon, so i have no link to share - just the observation that the heart attack kids have evolved, and a recommendation that you check them out.

so, i ended up back at phog for a last beer, listened to some kids talk about philosophy and stuff and stumbled out late into the cold...

...and it was, indeed, cold - cold enough that i stopped a few times to warm up. i was reminded why i don't do this at this time of year. according to the thermostat, it wasn't that bad, but the wind was brutal. it was a difficult walk, at points.

but, i got me some nachos, took me a shower and then slept all day.

so, there's the review. it could be a while before the next one.

i think that, in terms of journals, the answer is no - let the documents stand alone as they are. that's the point.

let the interactive documents exist as a front end for the period discs, which are isos.

but, should the liner notes have an html mirror, as a third part? if so, it makes sense to embed, right?

yeah.

so,

1) let the journals stand as they are. pure text. pure data.
2) when the journals are integrated into the aleph isos, make them interactive with the local files over html.
3) make the liner notes so that they're interactive with local files in html format, at least for the file types that are supported. so, if you download the record, you get an interactive document.

so, i'll need to add html files to inri000 and keep them going, moving forward.

note: should i be embedding audio and video into journals?

final product will be a non-proprietary html5 project with local file access, but is there some value in actually embedding the links? with the vlogs, maybe more so.

that would require changing file formats from doc to something else.

so, i'm making a conscious attempt to refocus. i've been stuck in a rut and want to get back to work. so, i want to make a few notes on the condition of the various sites i have running, here, before i shift gears rather dramatically.

i think it's clear at this point that i can't do all of these things at once, that i need to do one or two at a time. attempts to do everything all at once have merely left me unable to finish anything at all. so, what am i going to be focusing on?

my focus for quite some time now has been rebuilding blogs. first, it was the politics blog and the music journal, which i had running recurrently. i spent a large amount of 2016-2017 pulling data down from the internet into a set of word documents, and almost all of 2018 rebuilding these two blogs from those word documents. these would grow to take in the vlog and other things that developed over the last few years, creating a narrative of my musical output from 2013-2017 (as well as some cursory and largely unimportant political rambling). then, i expanded these to include a review site and a travel blog, so that i was rebuilding four blogs instead of two. as an addendum to this, there were two alter-reality blogs put aside - one that would end in mid-1996 and one that would start in mid-1996. but, the actual focus - the actual thing i was doing - was building liner notes for the music site. all of the 6 blogs i have running are essentially intended as commentary for the music. they have no meaningful context, otherwise, and mean nothing to me when separated from it.

i wanted this all to converge into a period disc that i would release at the end of 2019 (on the 20 year anniversary of the end of inri, 1996-1999) and that would include final versions of my first 37 releases, the corresponding sections of each of the six blogs (but mostly the music journal + the two alter-reality blogs) and vlogs that were relevant to the construction, interspersed. this would be repeated for period 3 (the next 39 releases), to be released in mid-2023. this would be intended as a comprehensive historical document, in the form of an electronic journal. don't call it a memoir - i'm not important enough for that. but, remember - as an artist, i basically die at 30. everything since that age has been documentation. there has been and will be no new original recordings past the year 2011. so, don't call it a memoir....but call it one if you really want. i'm not upset about not having a meaningful existence past the age of 30, because i never wanted to live past 30, anyways; most people get exceedingly lame in their 30s, and downright awful in their 40s, so i'm happy enough to avoid becoming that.

unfortunately, a series of necessary legal issues around the security of my housing that have largely been outside of my control have slowed me down dramatically, and forced me to extend the release date of the period disc by an extra ten years. i do not currently have a clear resolution as to how to get over this and get back to a stable recording situation, but i'll have to get by with what i can. i really see little recourse but to try and extend the legal battles to my eventual advantage. this will allow me the space to build the alter-reality from 1989-1996 in real time, and then let me click back into what has already been written for mid-2027. so, the period one disc is now scheduled for release at the end of 2029, the period two disc is scheduled for release at the end of 2033, the period three disc will be scheduled for release sometime in mid 2037 and the period four disc will be scheduled for release around 2041. if i make it there, i'll be 60 years old. and, no - i don't plan on actually doing much concrete over the next twenty years, except finishing the documentation of the work (and the work itself...) that i created over the first thirty.

i want to publish two more journals - 12/2013 and 01/2014 - and am hoping to have this completed by dec 1, 2019 at the latest. this will bring me to the end of the "first reconstruction period", which will produce an eventual aleph (to be unnamed and unpublished until the material from 07/2003-07/2013 is fully completed).

at that point, i will be focusing on two primary projects:

1) the alter-reality, starting in late 1989. i will have to get a journal for christmas, it seems, for me to write in, and then spend the next six years typing out. this journal will include reflections of events that i experienced over the ages of 8-15, including book reports and music reviews. all attempts will be made to be as honest as i can. but, i obviously can't revert to that state (if i ever grew past it...), and i don't want to get neurotic about it. i'm going to get neurotic about it...but i have to finally start with this.

2) i'm going to get back to work on period 3, which is going to mostly involve republishing a lot of already existing records from 2003-2007. there will, however, also be some major projects worked on - a lost symphony from 2003, a matlab project from 2004, an imaginary straight-up rock record from 2005, a groundbreaking mix of electronic noise and jazz guitar from early 2006 and some foundational new demos for early 2007, to move into period 4. i do not want to plan past the completion of period 3, at this point, which is defined as the period of time between when i got back from bc in mid-2003 and when i moved into a new apartment on bronson ave in early 2007.

period 1 is from 05/96-12/99 (3.5 years), period 2 is from 01/00-05/03 (3.5 years) and period 3 is from 08/03-02/07 (3.5 years). period 4 will run until the middle of 2011, but it is not like the first three, as there were long spaces with no recording activity at all. i was 27 in january, 2008; to an extent, period 4 is a period of slow death, even if it has some major works in it. i will be approaching the narrative from this perspective, as it occurs. and, given that my maximum expected lifespan is around 60, i may be nearing my actual death, as i get there. there was no meaningful musical activity from the middle of 2011 until the middle of 2013; i was struggling badly with existing living arrangements, as i was trying to figure out how to rebuild my studio.

so, i have the rest of my life planned out, anyways. and, these are the two things i'll be focusing on - getting the alter-realty rolling and finishing period 3. if i get back to publishing the journals from 2014 forwards, it will be in spurts, and because i'm sick or some other such thing. well, until i get close in 2025-2026, anyways. i'm actually fully confident that i'll be done period 3 by then, at least.

i don't feel the time has been wasted. i've figured out a lot of things, and i've got a process in order. this needed to eventually be done, and i'll need to eventually get back to it. the time i've wasted has been wasted fighting court battles, and that's going to continue until i can find a safe, smoke-free living arrangement. this isn't it, either.

what about all these other sites?

1) as mentioned, the bandcamp site should see the most activity in the next little while; that is my primary site, and always has been.

2) the noise trade site will see decreasing levels of activity, and that activity will be mostly related to the alter-reality, for the next long while. expect journals from 1990-1996 to be the primary uploads for the next several years. i hope they allow me to reorganize the front page, soon.

3) the patreon site is still there. if you want me to stop wasting time in court and get more productive in my art, that's the way to do it. i have yet to receive a single donation over patreon.

4) the music journal will pick up with increased activity at the bandcamp site.

5) j's journal will be the primary journal site, and will start in late 1989.

6) the alter-reality will stay dormant until mid-2027, when i pick up where i left off.

7) i'm still vlogging. i haven't stopped. i have video to edit going back to mid-2017, and will need to get to it to buiild the aleph discs. but, the focus of the vlogs was to act as a set of ads for the bandcamp site, which i drew attention to through trolling, and that didn't work out (because they shadow-banned me for being an anti-american communist). i never had any interest in vlogging for the sake of vlogging, it was always meant as a gateway. my focus on the vlogs, moving forwards, is going to be for the aleph discs, rather than for youtube. yes, things will get uploaded eventually, but probably in large chunks, and it could be a very, very long time. i wouldn't expect anything to get uploaded here until i'm done period 3, at least - it could be after 2025.

8) the koala central command will continue to try to bring their fugitive to justice, but it's not clear exactly what that means. there will be music related uploads here, as they become meaningful.

9) i don't expect to spend a lot of time on music or book reviews in the near future, and may never get to it at all. my focus on reviews is mostly a 2011-2013 thing, when i had no studio to work in. so, this is at the bottom of the list, in terms of priorities. but, review information will come up in the alter-realty.

10) the travel blog was mostly a joke to start with, and it's utilization will depend on how often i'm actually posting from a distance. anything posted to this blog will end up somewhere else, in time.

11) i'm sure i'll continue to find reasons to rant.

12) my facebook pages will continue to be useful as update lists, but little else.

13) the appspot site is not dead, but it's sleeping.

14) the viability of the soundcloud site depends on whether i can get people to let me spin or not.

15) i don't and have never used twitter. i'm not going to start.

and, let's try to get the liner notes up by the end of the day.

i had to crash this morning, but i did get the facebook stuff synced properly. so, all i have left to do is the liner notes for 000, 001, 003, 016, 027, 028 and 030.

but, it hit me last night - what am i even doing?

i tend to get stuck in things and lose track of reality. where am i going with this? what are my actual goals, here?

i wanted to get this done by 2020 because the aleph disc was closing. but, now i've put the aleph disc off to 2030 - and the first demo until 2026. so, there's no longer any hurry at all...

so, what's the point of spending the winter rebuilding these blogs, if i'm not up against a deadline (that i'll never meet)? 

i just feel like i'm wasting time. i feel like i'm running out of time. if it was faster, great, but it's just taking forever. i'm lost in my own world, and spinning in circles within it.

let me get through the first reconstruction phase, which is two more months. and, then i think i'm going to want to put this aside completely, for a good while. i've got the data put aside for later. there's no rush. let me get back to real work.

which means...

1) alter-reality, starting in late 1989 or early 1990. that's 30 years ago. that will be my writing project. and, i can get this journal process moving in that direction, instead.
2) period 3. let's get to it.

i have legal stuff to do this week, first. november was slow, when i wanted it to be fast, but let's hope i can pivot and get through the last two months for december 1st. these could both end up being ~50 page music archives.

what about the smell? it's better since i woke up, but i noticed it was bad on the other side of the apartment, last night. i'm starting to think that what capping the line has done is push the gas back up through the lines in the bathroom and kitchen, and i'm wondering if that's going to balance itself out. like, does it need to find a new equilibrium point, now? 

is there an issue with the fixtures in the bathroom?

but, why is the gas pulling up in the first place? i think it's crystal clear that the lines need to be snaked. and, that's probably going to be what the court date ends up being about. we'll see if it betters itself or not....

right now, it seems like i'm waiting for the system to rebalance, and i'll have to go from there. no, i don't know - i'm trying to figure this out. but, that's my deduction based on what i've observed.

when can i get back to this rebuilding process, then?

why don't i get through period 3 and see. 2025, maybe?

or, maybe i'll chip away at it here and there.

but, i need to pivot out of this. i need to do something more constructive.

right now, i need to finish these liner notes and get to the legal stuff for a few more days. so, expect reposts for the 2013 releases up this afternoon.

here is the noise trade smashwords link for the readable version of the november, 2013 archive of this blog. it's 132 pages.

http://books.noisetrade.com/j/112013-music-journal
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026613

the fifth entry in the music journal series, which is the month of november, 2013 and is 132 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over november, 2013. it includes facebook posts, google+ posts and emails with acquaintances and family members, in an attempt to document the first reconstruction phase of rebuilding my discography, including remastering and (re)publishing inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, ini028 and inri029. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 70 separate txt documents (all html files) that are referenced in the journal. the liner notes for inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, inri028 and inri029 are also included.

the events documented in this journal occurred in november, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed, released and finalized in doc and pdf format on oct 30, 2019. doc201311.

credits

released December 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

mom - participant
the initial landlord - participant
sennheiser technical support - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/11-2013-music-journal

yeah, i'm in tonight. it's a combination of things - i am actually feeling a tad better (i'm at like 95%, now), but it didn't warm up quite as much as forecast, and, despite feeling a little better, i still don't really feel like smoking anything at all tonight.

i'm kind of happy in my blanket tonight, actually, and don't really want to leave it. it happens. i'm more interested in getting through 2013 - as it will be final when i do. like, that's the end of that. forever.

i wanted to start the journal off in mid-1989, as well, and was hoping i'd already be there. but, i'm going to wait until christmas before i get antsy about it. i may do the full six months at once, and start off in 1990. or, i may get a journal for christmas and reflect back a little, just starting fresh in 1990.

i don't think i can put aside the time to live full time in my 9 year old self, so i think i'm looking at infrequent alter-reality updates for a bit, anyways. i will need to plan this out by looking at things like release dates, and trying to figure out specific life events. christmas...

i could be done november by monday, anyways. really.

for right now, the update is that the master document is entirely synced and finished. and ready to cut up. it's 350 pages, smaller than the last few, and will shrink even more because a lot of it is email relics. there's 70 html files to deal with, but i think this is the last month like that for a good while.

i also wanted to get january, 2014 done before i fire up the music pc, so let's hope i can get through this by the end of the week.

and, if i'm in for most of the winter, let's hope 2-3 days turnover time is realistic for most months. can i get to the end of 2017 by christmas?

the liberals are supposed to do better than this

so, i was out around 17:00, a little earlier maybe, and went straight to my bike. i had a few ounces of vodka left - maybe two shots. but it tasted awful, at that point. i needed mix. so, we put that away for a few minutes...

i didn't notice anything peculiar about my bike at this point; i just unlocked it and started riding north.

i had $17 and change left, out of $120 for the weekend (which is a lot more in cad).

$80 - $15 (sacri moniti) - $15 (beethoven) - $10 (3 beer @ deluxx fluxx) - $2 (1 beer @ pop off) = $38.

$38 + $40 =  $78.

$78 - $18 (smokes + drinks)  - $5 (trumbullplex) - $18 (6 beer @ marble) - $8 (smokes) - $10 (food) - $2 (coffee @ dso) = $17.

nothing was that expensive, it just added up after a long weekend. and, remember: getting to a machine in detroit is hard. i need to deal with what i have.

i didn't budget for that extra pack of smokes, and probably wouldn't have needed it if it wasn't for the fact that i destroyed the previous one. that gets me up to $25, which is more what i was planning for, going into the dso. so, i bought a coffee instead of a beer...

cover at the post-rock show was $10, leaving me $6 + change for mix and beer, and i should say a little bit about the other show that was happening.

the initial plan was not to go to this post-rock show, with bands i was unaware of, with the exception of this local act called torus, which i had missed a few times previously; rather, the initial plan was to see a legendary psych rock act called the legendary pink dots at el club. and, if i had made it through the night with something closer to $40 than $25, i might have done that.

it was really a cost thing, primarily, i'll acknowledge that. the cover at the lpd show was $25 usd, which is about as steep as i'll ever even think about paying. i usually have a hard time, mentally, with $15. i want cover to be less than $10, usually, unless it's something spectacular. then, there's the $8 beer at el club. you'll note the cost of beer elsewhere - it's $2-$3 everywhere else. even considering that the beer at el club is 1.5 beers, you're still looking at over $5, which is like twice as much. with $25 cover, you'd better show up with at least $35 if you want to actually enjoy the night. i just didn't have it on me...

and, might lpd have been spectacular? i'm sure they were in the 80s and 90s and even a good part of the 00s. i'm a little skeptical, nowadays - and i haven't heard anything from them since the last tear garden record. they would be in their late 60s at this point, and no doubt look a lot older; i remember thinking that ka-spel was in his 70s when he was only in his 40s. so, i might have missed an awesome show, but i suspect i was a little too young for it and would have walked out feeling ripped off by a show that was a little slow and prodding for me. that's gen x, for you - always stuck between, in the glut.

i would have loved to see this band in their prime, but i think i missed it and am ok with accepting it.

but, if you do want to check them out, this is as seminal and underground and important a band as you'll ever find: https://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com/album/angel-in-the-detail

they were always mid-tempo, so when i use language like slow and prodding, it's just a question of whether the edge is still there - and maybe i'm wrong, maybe it is.

so, i found this post-rock show for $10 up in hamtramck instead, and it just made more sense, in context. with the $17 i had left after the symphony, there wasn't actually a choice involved, unless i wanted to spend $10 taking out another $20 (which is closer to $30 cdn), and i didn't.

i stopped at the gas station up woodward, first, to get some mix, and was able to find a tall bottle of faygo mt dew clone for $1.20. it said it had caffeine in it; how much, wasn't clear. it did the trick. so, i'm down to $16 + change.

still no issue with the bike, heading up woodward, up grand, up oakland, over clay, past the russell and into hamtramck via the back way, which took me out to the new dodge from the south. i drove by it the first time...

cycling around a few times, i was able to find a wood post to park at, behind the store next door. i didn't check to see what the store was, and didn't think it was important. bike seemed fine when i left it there with my bag, a little before 18:00....

the kids in torus - and these are kids. really. - were out back early, hanging out in their van. they took the tool comparison as a compliment, and claimed their new material sounded like hum, which seemed like shit-talking (and turned out to be). cost of beer at new dodge: $2 on tap. so, i've got three beers left and five bands to see, and i'm hoping this works out...

the first band up was called "rags and riches" and appears to have lost their guitarist somewhere between here and kentucky, instead coming up with two percussionists and a very poppy (like, new kids on the block or backstreet boys style poppy), hip-hop oriented lead singer. there were points were they had three drummers going; the intent was clearly to make the percussion the centre of the act. i'm not sure how compelling it was, but i'd never seen anything quite like it.

i've looked for sound samples, but i can't find anything without the guitarist so you'll need to seek this out on your own.

the second act up was man mountain, and they did a type of slower moving post-rock that's become kind of standard in the genre, since some midwest kids first heard mogwai. it's that very specifically american post-rock sound that my canadian ears thinks is a little too precious and sappy. it's worth checking out as an opening band, but it's exceedingly generic, too, so you shouldn't expect to be surprised or blow away by it.

https://manmountain.bandcamp.com/

au revoir continued on, and were a little heavier, leaning more towards a pelican or caspian sound. the kids outside were talking about caspian. the effects work is maybe leaning a little towards god is an astronaut, with the spacey sweeps, but i didn't catch a synth player.

again: i enjoyed watching this perched from a bar stool after a super long night, but i like the genre, and it is generic. it's good at what it does, but don't expect any surprises out of this.

shy, low then took it up another notch, while essentially carrying on with the same basic idea. again: you pretty much know exactly what you're getting out of this before it starts.

and, torus came on at the end, and played their one 35 minute song, start to finish:

https://torusdetroit.bandcamp.com/releases

so, the sets on this night were...they were what i expected, and both a pleasant and kind of chill way to end a crazy adventure and a reminder of why i tend to avoid seeing this style of music, live. it'd been a while, it was a nice reprieve. it'll probably be a while before the next time.

i first started feeling ill on this night at around 22:00 or so, between my second and third beers at this venue.

it was early when it was done - 23:30. so, i just had to take a nice slow bike ride back to the tunnel, for 00:30. or, so i thought..

i get around the corner to my bike and realize instantly that the tire has been mangled, but i'm not entirely certain, and am still not, what was going on with it. my sweater is still in my bag, as are my empty prescription bottles, my lipstick and a few other pieces of random trash. it seemed clear that the bag had been handled, but there was no apparent effort to take anything out of it. so, what is this, then? is this vandalism? are the cops bothering me (i think they have before.)?

i tried to ride the thing down the block, and couldn't - there wasn't enough air in the tube to keep the tire on the rim. what else can i do but walk home? without rummaging through my pockets, i'm thinking that i have something like $0.50 cents on me, tops. so, i'm expecting a long walk back to the tunnel, and a long night waiting for the bus. but, there's a gas station just past the russell, on clay, maybe i can talk them into letting me try to fill it up...

i finally rummage through my pockets when i get there. the cost of air is $0.75, and i do actually have it on me. score. and, the tube seemed to take it, so i'm hoping it's enough to get home on.

i get around the corner, past grand, and ask somebody for the time: it's not yet midnight. so, as long as the tires hold, i should make it.

it got a little scary moving up woodward past the fountains at the dia, because i could feel it starting to give. but, once i got to campius martius, i knew i'd catch the bus back. and, my stomach was starting to turn on me, too - i really wanted to get home.

customs was easy, although they seem to have been expecting me. i wonder sometimes just how closely the cops are paying attention to me, as they seem to grin at me in weird ways - not unlike my dad used to, when i came home at 4:15, shitfaced, from a friend's house.

did you have a good night?

you can only weakly nod. but, i was actually pretty sober at this point, what i was noticing more was that my stomach was starting to turn. 

i decide to walk my bike home. from here for the night, to ensure i'm avoiding further damage until i can get a look at it, and there's paramedics waiting around the corner. hrmmn. i'm ok, though - i just keep walking. the cops appear to follow me most of the way home, from this point. i actually think they followed me home on friday, too.

i guess they're checking to make sure i don't have any meetings with secret russian spies on the way, there. but, listen - they'd be screwed even if they caught us. we'd use the cone of silence. they wouldn't be able to hear a thing.

i dunno. whatever.

i stopped to get some nachos on the way home, but actually had to wait for my stomach to come down a bit before i could actually eat them. and, by monday night, i was convinced i'd caught strep throat and must have been dealing with the onset of it.

so, what kind of crazy weekend is this? psychedelic rock, kraut rock and noise punk on friday, followed by a grindcore show on saturday that led into a drum 'n' bass party, beethoven's 5th at the detroit symphony orchestra and a post-rock night to close it off. it's a festival weekend every weekend in detroit, if you know where to find it.

at this stage, this appears certain to be the last long weekend of the summer. so, i'm glad i made the best of it.

i left the club at around 9:30 or so, drove by the sound guys (who were setting up at the art of armageddon, apparently), bought some smokes at the gas station, took another swig of that vodka (you don't think i drank all of it, do you? i can't drink 20 ounces of straight vodka, i'll pass out. there was about 5 ounces left.), parked behind the orchestra and stumbled down to the diner to get some eggs. as mentioned, i was there a little after 10:00 - i remember it being 10:14, exactly.

for reference, the symphony started at 15:00. so, i was going to hang out until 13:30-14:00 or something, then go down early, get a coffee and wait for the thing to start.

and, yes, i nodded off, i think for obvious reasons, now that you know the story. but, let's look at the facts here:

1) i intended to be in the diner for around 3-4 hours, on a sunday morning for brunch, from about 10:00-14:00, at the latest. 3-4 hours for brunch on sunday (from 10:00-14:00) might be the most normal thing in the history of normality - if there's something more normal than that, you'll have to be explicit about it, 'cause i can't imagine it.

2) so, i bought eggs and coffee a little after 10:00. let's say it was 10:30. so, let's say it got there about 10:45, which is about right for this place. i bought an extra side of french fries when i was done, probably around 11:30-ish. so, they would have got there about 11:45-ish. i got sleepy when i was eating my fries. i had not yet finished my coffee.

3) so, i must have dozed off - with my fries and coffee in front of me - from around 12:00-13:00.

4) i am in this establishment frequently, and have always bought things when i'm in it. i have, however, experienced some transphobia from the staff that i've largely shrugged off....

so, you can imagine that i was rather baffled when they sent the cook out - pilate-like. he's the messenger. he didn't care. - to tell me i "wasn't wanted here" and would have to leave before they "call the cops".

i'm not sure exactly what they would tell the officers, should they have come in, while i was finishing my fries and drinking my coffee. i'm not homeless. i wasn't asking people for food or money - and i hadn't finished my meal yet. they would essentially have to admit that they were throwing me out because of my gender expression, and i might point out that they're lucky i'm not an american citizen, because that's a lawsuit they'd have lost, if i was. i would have had to leave if it had come to that, surely, but i'd certainly want to get that report and publish it, as well as hand it off to the detroit business association, to let them deal with it.

it woke me up, at least. i ignored the cook, finished my fries, used the bathroom and came back to the front desk.

"can i talk to your manager?"

"what?"

"the cook just came out and told me you were going to call the police. i want to talk to the manager."

"you've been hear since 10:00."

"it's sunday brunch. i. demand. to. speak. to. your. manager."

"ok..."

a few minutes later, this 20-something arab guy comes out. you can put this together, right? he's not the owner here; i know the owner here. so, we've got some transphobic muslim day manager throwing the gays out of a restaurant he doesn't even own. not acceptable, at all. i rightfully gave him shit for overstepping his bounds...

"is that how you treat your customers?"

and i laced into him for a good ten minutes. i had food in front of me. and, yeah, i'm tired, but so what? when you come in and buy something in a restaurant, you get the booth until you're done. i'm not hanging out without buying anything. i'm not staying for a long time after i've finished, either. i'm literally in the middle of finishing a meal, and waiting for the symphony across the street to start.

and, i demanded a fucking apology.

he did give me one. see, and this is the point you actually want to see in this circumstance - you want this person to understand that they're in the wrong, even if it doesn't click immediately, and i think he clearly did realize that, i could see it in his facial expressions. he looked like he was worried he'd lose his job. he didn't lose his arrogance about it, and his apology was clearly coerced and bullshit, but he knew what he did was wrong.

you might expect me to call for a boycott of the detroit coney one on woodward avenue, after that. you might also expect me to stop going in there. i actually think that's the wrong approach, in context - i will continue coming here (and if they call the cops on me for being queer, we can take it the community and let them adjudicate such a thing - they won't win that debate), and i would even like to put out a call for queers throughout detroit to frequent the coney one more often. let's have big, queer parties there every weekend!

there's laws in place that say you can't do what he did, but that's secondary to the general point - you can't let religious groups move in and put down rules and restrictions like this. if the message i got was "i'm a muslim, and i don't like you, and i want you to leave" then my response is "i'm a queer atheist, and i'll go where i please, and if you don't like it then you can leave, yourself.".

so, let's get all the queers to the coney one, let's take this place over; let's make it ours.

when i was done berating him, i went to the symphony a little early, got a coffee and headed in to hear the pre-show program, by the conductor. we're going to split this off, tactically....

i was up late enough in the afternoon on saturday to get my tickets printed before the library closed, but i spent some time writing, and i got something to eat, so i wasn't out of the house until well after 21:00. i was sure i'd miss the show, which was supposed to be over at 23:00. thankfully, it was only the second act playing when i got there....

so, i got to see prissy whip, which is what i was there to see, and who came on somewhere around 23:30, i think. sort of. they were supposed to have a female singer, who was a no-show. i don't think anybody really knew the details except the band, but the rumour floating around was that it had something to do with a possessive boyfriend. she apparently made it the st. louis show on thursday, according to the footage, so something appears to have happened in that 48 hour space. hey, i don't know; i was just at the show, and she wasn't.

so, we got an instrumental set, instead, and it was actually fairly compelling, as it was. they're operating in a pretty syncopated style of noise rock, so removing the vocals just brought out the percussive aspects of the guitars, which you may or may not recall are technically percussion instruments, in a technical and eurocentric sense (i guess the arabs and indians would have a different take on the whole thing, but they're not me, so  they can figure that out on their own). so, they basically banged out this three part drums-guitar-bass percussion set for a few minutes and then abruptly stopped and that was that.

so, i'm hesitant to post something because it wouldn't really be an accurate representation of what i actually saw. but, you can check them out by googling them. they come recommended heavily by deerhoof, and there's reasons for it, even if it's maybe a little closer to melt banana, overall.

i did check out part of the next set, which was by a band called "pig's blood", but it was just screaming and yelling and breaking things and i don't listen to that kind of shit, so i was just back outside within seconds...

i actually spent a lot of time talking to the people outside that night, who were all 30+, and all felt like they were too old to be there, but in fact were exactly the right age. there actually weren't any kids there, and i'm the only one that seems to have actually got their head around this a long time ago: there haven't been any kids at any spaces like this in a long time, now. these kinds of shows are often 40+, let alone 30+. i'm ok with that; i don't want to hang out with kids in their 20s, anyways. but, it seemed to be the first time it clicked for some of these guys.

i also want to make a general point about my social skills when i'm drinking. yes - i'm friendly (in a good way) when i'm drunk. i talk to girls, and i talk to boys, and i talk to people in between, and i don't tend to really think much of it. i didn't used to be this friendly or this confident, though; i didn't used to have the nerve to just stumble into a group of random people of whatever gender and start talking to them, no matter how drunk i was. rather, i used to be a quiet, distant drunk that would sit in the corner and avoid eye contact and only speak meekly when spoken to. so, my confidence is a function of the transition; it wasn't there before, and it won't be there anymore if you take it away. that is, in fact, one of the medical cases for doing it - it gives people better social skills, because they feel more comfortable in their outward presentations. that's one of the things about this that people tend to have a hard time with, because i guess i just come off as having a bit of a swagger sometimes (which is a misinterpretation of the reality).

the actual truth is that i'm actually completely asexual and completely disinterested in romance, and while i do understand that this maybe isn't always as clear as i assume it should be, that doesn't change the truth of it, and shouldn't affect how i'm behaving.

so, i'm talking to what i presume to be a cisfemale about alcohol/caffeine mixtures, mountain dew and rockstar vodka, and she gets bored and walks off when i point out that i don't watch tv, 'cause i guess that had something to do with her perspective on mountain dew. i have heard something about a boycott, but i actually haven't looked into it, and i don't know what it's really about. i don't think i've ever seen a mountain dew commercial, ever. i legitimately didn't ask for her name and don't know it, and don't even actually even care, but am happy to wish her a goodnight, regardless - i'm just about to get up and leave, myself; this is just stage one of a long weekend, for me. this kind of random conversation is something that happens at least a few times for me, every weekend, in detroit - it's nothing special, nothing unusual. but, i look up and there's a person grinning ear-to-ear on the bench.

"i didn't want to interrupt the conversation, but...."

the implication is clear enough, but it's completely wrong, and as mentioned, i've been through it before. but, i grasp that it's a hard thing to get your head around - you don't see somebody that feels confident in a female identity and is just having a girl-to-girl conversation about beverages, you see a confident guy with an array of pick-up lines that seems to be working, and are impressed by it and feel the need to comment on it. and, maybe you're tickled by the irony of it, given that you might have it in the back of your mind that you'd like to fuck me. but, you're wrong, dammit. every time...

i'm always just looking to hang out, and i'm sorry if i come off as friendly, but you gotta adjust, 'cause i'm not going to tone it down.

anyways..

after i realized the nature of the last band, i decided that i'd finish my spiked lemonade and go ahead on to the club when it was down to a few sips, or mostly done. and, as it was, i was in the process of leaving relatively soon, when somebody handed me a 40 of vodka, and i think you want to imagine a morricone-esque voiceover here, dry and somewhat chapped, just because.

"i don't want it, man. take what you want. i'm done."

we weren't actually in the desert, and the sun wasn't actually beating down (although the weather was pleasant), and he didn't actually spit after he told me to take what i want, and he didn't actually stumble off into the distance, but that is all secondary to the 40 of vodka i've been handed and instructed to do as i will with.

my bottle of mountain dew - 710 ml, or 24 oz - was down to the last fifth or so, at that point. i didn't fill it up, exactly, but i did take a fair amount.

so, i ended up at the club a little bit later and a little bit drunker than i intended to. i am often accused of being drunk when i'm actually not; on saturday, such accusations would have had merit, although i don't actually recall hearing them, which perhaps merely stresses the point.

i remember asking somebody what time it was when i got in. it was 1:15. early enough..

and, i remember quickly buying several drinks. i broke a five, broke a ten, broke the five i got back from the ten and then handed over three crumpled 1's - i remember all of this. did the drum and bass set play late? it seemed that way...

then it's a little blurry. until....

"you can't sleep at the club".

so, i jumped up, checked my pockets. i didn't immediately remember opening my second pack of smokes, and i thought i had an extra three dollars. i felt ok, though. so, i bought another beer and went back to dancing. we're clear, memory-wise, from here until i got to the diner...

what happened? well, you tell me, right. but, i can deduce a few things.

i found my cigarette pack a little later in my other back pocket and was initially confused about it. it had been ripped open the wrong way (from the bottom of the pack) and was half missing, almost as though it got cut up for filter. i was initially kind of baffled by that, but i now actually remember lighting a few cigarettes backwards, taking a few tries to figure it out, and then making an adjustment around it. so, i very specifically recall taking smokes out of my back pocket and flipping them around before i lit them - five or ten times, at least. that's what would happen if you rip your pack open from the bottom. i guess i gave a bunch away, but i do recall smoking out of the pack, on second thought.

in fact, i remember the smell of burning filter, and remember stomping them out, as though they were defective, and the next one would be better, just to have the same thing happen. there must have been a stash of five-ten wasted cigarettes out there, lit from the filter, and otherwise unsmoked.

i actually have a habit of smoking cigarettes backwards when i'm drunk, and only do it when i'm drunk. that's an idiosyncratic giveaway. if you ever see me do this, you know i'm drunk...

i know i was out in the back area when i was pulling the smokes out of my pocket. i wasn't asking around, but that takes me pretty late in the morning.

so, i must have sat down around 5:00-5:30 and nodded off for a few minutes, before somebody woke me up.

as it is, i know i enjoyed dancing to the drum and bass set through the night and through the course of at least the first four beers. i remember thinking "the set is going to end soon", and then it not ending, and kind of putting off having that smoke until it did. the music was good, and the dancing was good, so i kept with it, and avoided going off for that smoke a little longer than i normally would have - a sign i was having fun. and, maybe, the more i think about it, the more i remember buying that fifth beer. maybe? i'm sure i did, anyways...

as mentioned, the sixth beer happened after the nod, and i was able to spend the last hours of the set dancing, as the sun came up - which is the actual point of this sordid exercise. whatever experience i had with that vodka and those cigarettes earlier, i do remember dancing at sunrise. so, i'd argue it was worth it.

of course, it's my fault. i poured it. i drank it. but, i can promise you i'll do the same thing next time, if you give me a 40 of vodka and tell me to have at it, and i don't feel any particular shame about it, either. hey, i don't pretend i'm responsible; i have no responsibility to be responsible. rather, the operative question is this: how often do you get handed a 40 by a stranger and told to go to town with it? so, shouldn't you take advantage of the situation, because it's rare? if it happens again, i'll do the same thing, but what are the chances, right?

the set was done a little early, and the weather was warmer than expected, so i'm outside at roughly 9:00 with some people i think i've partied with before, and they want to roll a joint, but need to get into a car, because they're tired, themselves. so, before i know it, i'm in the car with them. and they're driving....

the driver claims he knows an after hours spot. it's 9:00. you were at the after hours spot. but, we're nonetheless off for a spin, to find an empty spot (of course), before heading back to the bar. but, the puff was well received, just right then.

the audio guys are finishing up, and i had to ask them for a smoke, because i was actually out (or had otherwise destroyed my own pack). so, i'm having a smoke outside the bar when it starts raining, and it passes fairly quick.

"you don't think you're coming back in?", he says. and, this is the only suggestion i received that i may have been a little wilder than i recall...

but, i didn't want to come back in.

"you were on edibles last weekend, you said?"

it was the week before, actually. but, did i tell him that? or did he read it?

well, maybe he can read this, too.

i got to the diner around 10:00, and we'll start a new review for sunday.

it should surprise nobody that i didn't get out of the house until after 16:20 and missed the 16:30 bus by minutes, realizing the inevitability of it only once i got to the bank machine. so, i uncharacteristically bought smokes and headed down to the bus station to drink an untouched, non-alcoholic mountain dew (i decided i should save the little bit of vodka in my bottle until saturday, and that i'd just get an extra beer or two in or near the venue once i got there, early - intending to get there early).

the box office closed at 17:00, you'll recall, so catching the 17:00 bus over would have meant relying on the hope that there was somebody there between 17:00 and 19:00. otherwise, i was going to have to wait for the symphony to start and i was going to miss the prog show...

worse, i found myself in dire need of a bowel movement a few minutes before 17:00. maybe you've been in this situation, where you have to choose between squirming around on the bus and missing it altogether; i reasoned that it might even make sense to miss it at this point (because my chances of catching somebody at the box office were dependent on them being open for the friday night show), so i ran to the tim's, and did in fact miss the bus when i got out. at this point, i was no longer going to catch an early beer, so i ran around the corner to get a couple of shots of jager instead...

when i finally got on to the bus at 17:30, it was uncharacteristically packed, or at least had more people than i'm used to seeing, which meant a lengthy wait through customs that was even further complicated by a distressed transport trailer that didn't want to listen to the border cops in getting around the corner. so, i didn't get on my way until 18:00...

i got to the dso something close to 18:30, and did in fact get my beethoven tickets for sunday at 15:00. fait accompli. so, i'm off to this downtown bar i haven't been to before to see the psych show...

it's in a basement, it turns out, which i wasn't expecting. the floors are fluorescent and appear to glow in the dark; there's an arcade off to one side. beer is on tap and in plastic cups, which i don't like, but cheap, which i do like. the venue is broadly similar in layout to the shelter down the street. i looked around, but there was nobody outside to start, so i caught sacri monti without the aid of cannabis.

i can't be sure exactly, i'm new to the band, but i think they played their new record pretty much from start to finish in the roughly 40 minutes that they were allotted, which is roughly the length of the record. this is a five piece, with a moog/keyboard player and two guitarists in addition to the rhythm section. i mentioned that there's a dramatic mick ronson influence, but this is just the first thing that jumped out at me - it's, overall, a fairly good survey through early 70s british glam and prog, with multiple references to other seminal acts like hawkwind, pink floyd, king crimson and some genesis, too. this kind of thing seems to continue to go over well in california for some reason; there are contemporary california acts like mammatus and eye (well, ok. eye broke up.) that operate well in this space, while acts from pretty much any other place in the world seem to fall flat on it. maybe it's the angle of the sunlight hitting the ocean. i dunno.

this is probably an acquired taste, but if it is then i acquired it in the womb; i'm native to this, it just makes sense to me. i asked around and people were lukewarm about it, which is technically wrong, but not particularly surprising. every single person at the show should have been blown away by this set. if you get a chance to see this, don't miss it.

the next band up was called maggot heart, and i didn't spend a lot of time with them before i came in; i checked their bandcamp site long enough to conclude it was a lot poppier than the other two acts, and kind of left it at that. structure wise, they were essentially a corporate-style pop-punk band, and not particularly exciting, but, whether it was due to the bill or as a consequence of some other thing, they decided to extend the tracks a little bit, at least on this night. the result was a corporate-style pop-punk band with a jam band feel, which one could argue is sort of what the smashing pumpkins were, although the song structures were far more compressed than anything the pumpkins ever did. but, it ended up being some kind of alt. rock in that space, whether on purpose or not.

the songs were really not exciting, but the jamming saved the set. the drummer was especially useful in saving it...

the thing is that i don't know if what i saw was characteristic of them or not. i suspect it wasn't; i suspect that on most nights, you're going to see a more generic corporate pop-punk kind of set, something like nirvana, maybe. if they do the same kind of set they did on this night, though, they're at least worth not skipping. but, it didn't really speak to me, much - it's not a style of music i spend much time with anymore, at my age.

earthless headlined the show relatively early, and while i think the band is overrated, i was stoned enough to enjoy the set. i mean, listen - on some level you can't go wrong with this. you've got a drummer. you've got a bassist. you've got distortion on the guitar. you've got loud amps. so long as you don't try and sing, you can't fuck it up, right? well, if the audience is inebriated enough, anyways...

my technical nitpicking of the sound as less complicated than others might assume, and consequently sort of pretentious, is valid and everything, but it's secondary to the experience of actually listening to loud, instrumental music while baked.

and, yes, they made me laugh a few times with a series of absurd cliches. they just needed their little stonehenge, and it would have been spinal tap. but, that's fine, if you have fun...

i'm not going to see a band like earthless every night, but it's fun once in a while, if the bill has something more substantive on it. so, that's fine.

and, i had fun. i said that, right? maybe you'll have fun seeing them, too...

just don't actually take them seriously. they can do that enough for everyone else.

i was out of the show not much later than 10:00 - this was an early night - so i hoped to get down to another place i'd never been to before, namely the pop off world arcade over top of the checkers, right around the corner from the tunnel, in order to catch a local synthesizer player do a free set. hey, it seemed worth a beer. he said he'd either start at 21:00 or 22:00; i guess he started closer to 21:00, because i only heard 5-10 minutes before he stopped, and it was just kind of generic vintage synth music. i hope this venue does more things along these lines, because a synth bar is kind of unheard of, but perhaps overdue. i just had the one beer, and i guess i was out of there by 22:30-23:00.

i made it back to phog fairly early, with the intent to catch the late show there, which i largely did....

the first band was called 'of the pack', which is a local band that i've seen on a lot of bills around town but haven't actually seen play. and, i could've sworn that they were a bro-ish hardcore act, but it turns out they weren't; they had a kind of reggae-ish feel, on top of a pop-punk crux. i asked, and they claimed they were never hardcore. what can i say? i was more caught off guard than anything else. they did a cover of 1979 that missed the slur, which is a good way to describe them; it wasn't terrible, but they wouldn't bring me back for more, either.

i wanted to see bike thiefs, which were actually a bit more hardcore than i expected. based on the sound samples, i was expecting something roughly sonic youth-ish, but it actually came off more like very, very early thermals, with the kind of ranted vocals over the noise punk song structures. i found myself nodding off a little near the end of the set, and it's less because i was drunk (i wasn't.) and more because the sound was kind of hypnotic; it's more that they got me in a bit of a trance. so, i don't want to say i was disappointed. that's not quite right. but, it wasn't quite what i expected, either. if i were to see them again, i'd get coffee instead of beer....

i spent the rest of the night at phog, right until last call, got trolled by the friday night bartender about the use value of alcohol vs the use value of soda, and we'll talk about that through tomorrow's review, and stumbled out with a smoke at the very last minute. where's the party? nothing at villain's, which i learned earlier in the night was having a dungeons and dragons night (no joke.), but there's a whole lot of people at the strip club across the way....

i think i've mentioned previously that i've never been in a strip club. i certainly am not very interested about going into one at this point; you'd probably have to pay me to sit through it. i'd probably start crying if somebody tried to give me a lap dance. the whole thing's just insane, to me - i can't understand how these things still exist, in this day and age. but, they're around and there's people at them....

i'm actually hoping to bum a smoke from somebody, actually, maybe chat a little. yeah, it's like 3:30 or something - that's not late, for me. so, there's this guy that's like arab or something, and he's talking about how he's a law student. there seems to be an undertone to the conversation that the way we talk about immigrants in this country is backwards - they're largely upper class, in canada, because we screen them to be. it's the white trash that's poor. he's kind of sick of the racist narrative, is what he's trying to get across, and i actually agree with the point. his father's a doctor, his mother's a nurse, and they didn't raise him to be religious. well, he's out at 3:30 smoking at a strip club, i guess not, right? but, he is rich, though - they raised him to be that.

and, i'm finishing my smoke and about to leave, when these angry guys come stumbling out, and they're giving this guy a hard time because of where he's from. they're not drunk - i'm drunk; they're coked out. and, i've seen this before, actually. they blame bar fights on alcohol, but it's often not alcohol that causes these fights. i've seen enough of them. these fights have two primary causes - girls and cocaine. i think we've probably got both, here.

listen - i'm not going to stand up for some bigoted muslim that wants to nail me to a fucking tree because of my clothing decisions if he gets into a fight with an equally bigoted white supremacist. let them slaughter each other - we're better off if they're both dead. but, i'm not going to let these white trash frat boys rip this atheists' balls off just because of his ethnicity, either. i know what side i'm on, and what side i'm willing to fight for, and it's the side of non-believers and atheists and secularists. and i don't fucking care where you're from, or where your parents are from. at all.

so, they're getting up in his face....

"if you really want to get with the red and white.."

really? i don't know exactly what that means, but it was pretty clearly confrontational. so, i stepped in between them and asked:

"hey hey hey. is that really necessary."

see, in a situation like that, i'm white. i'm not always white, and i'm not particularly white, but, in context, i'm white. and, so that worried them, and you could see it in their eyes.

but, they look away, and they keep running their mouths off.

"i said, is that necessary?"

it was enough of a break that the arab guy was able to slip away, and i followed not long after him.

so, i got home after 4:00, made some pasta and crashed at something like 7:00. day two coming up....

we started last week on friday night, and the primary intent was actually to go down early to get some beethoven tickets. everything else kind of developed out of this.

when i first looked at the weekend, i was mostly just turned off by the weather. sub ten degrees on friday night, and rain on saturday night? well, it's october - i might at least get out for a double matinee on sunday, though, with the 5th followed by the lpd. it also looked like i could maybe catch a late show at phog on friday night, if i could stand the weather.

i had a loose plan, though. there was a late party at marble on saturday, and a punk show at trumbullplex on the way there, so maybe i could essentially come down early and dance before the beethoven show, if i could convince myself that the punk show was worthwhile. it ended up working the other way around, when i realized the show at marble was a drum 'n' bass dj, which is rare in detroit; this then became the focus of the weekend.

so, i bought some tickets for the marble show on friday morning, only to initially find myself stonewalled by the dso. sold out? well, it's the fifth, i guess. after changing browsers (and operating systems), i did realize that there were still tickets, but i'd need a credit card to buy them online. i didn't want to wait until sunday morning, or even saturday night. could i get there on friday, then?

i had in fact been looking at a show on friday at a bar i hadn't been to before called delux fluxx, which is right downtown. for all the time i spend in detroit, i only ever really transit through the core. what was the last show i saw in the downtown core? not corktown, not midtown, not the eastern market, but right downtown? it might have been as far back as early 2017...crywolf at the shelter. i think. the only show i've seen at st. andrew's is swans, and the only other show i saw at the shelter is son lux. you might catch me dancing at a few after hours spots right in the core once in a while, but i otherwise am only downtown for as long as it takes to get out of it. there's just not much there for me, generally.

i had initially ruled the show out, because the headliner (earthless) didn't really grab me, on inspection. i'm generally looking for a level of abstraction that just wasn't really present in the sound, which was more of a cliched kind of throwback. neither the drumming nor the guitar playing seemed that impressive, and rumour had it they were starting to sing, too. ack. so, i had scratched that off, only to notice that the opening band was on teepee - and if somebody from teepee comes to your town, you should always at least check to see if they're any good or not. it turns out we've got a prog band here with a big early bowie or spiders/ronson feel to it. score.

still, i wasn't sure i was going to go until the ticket issue came up, at which point i decided i should go down early and do a few things in midtown. for example, maybe i could drop off some recycling at the depot, finally. it's piling up. but, oddly, the depot was closed on fridays, so i resolved to just go down early to get the tickets. according to google, the box closes at 17:00; if i catch the 15:00 bus, i should get there before 17:00 for sure....

so, it took me all night to get through the facebook cross-reference, because the site is just impossibly slow. in the mean time, i got distracted and republished my soundcloud page, for dj sets. the facebook cross-reference is at least done.

how do you get your music in the ears of people if you can't find a drummer? i don't like metal, and the punk scene is moribund in any meaningful sense (what is left of it is pretty much just garbage). there's no such thing as alternative rock anymore. so, i'm stuck choosing between folk and techno, and i'm far more techno than i am folk, even if i'm really neither.

i dunno. i see these djs around town that like to pretend they're doing serious art, and most (all) of them aren't. but, this is the medium, so what else is there to do besides deal with it?

i've got a few sets up to start. if i can get some people to bite, and can find a crowd, however small, willing to listen, then we go to the next stage from there.

the truth is that i should have done this a long time ago, actually.

the site is on the side, as well.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas

first liner note release for inri000

these are the first demos i recorded, written 1994-1996 and recorded in the second half of 1996. this corresponds to the end of my 15th year and the beginning of my grade 10 school year. on the one hand, it's an intriguing document of a socially maladjusted teenage punk. on the other hand, it's a 15 year-old kid learning how to use a recording studio (and how to play the drums). influences are displayed on my sleeve just a little too loudly at times.

i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of the obscurantist reaches of 80s punk and 90s grunge. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point.

that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points.

this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been extremely limited. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness.

the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. finalized on june 26, 2016. first liner note release added on sept 30, 2019. as always, please use headphones.

i consider this an archival release with little direct listening value. i've pointed out repeatedly that i was 15. however, various segments have been isolated and pulled out for a higher listenability value over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a

this release also includes a printable j-card insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries in doc & pdf from all phases of production (1993-1996, 2013-2019). as of sept 30, 2019, the release includes a 47 page booklet that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-oct, 2013. 

credits

released December 25, 1996

j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, found sounds, percussion, production. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1