www.organical.net

Remember a few weeks ago, when we had that motherfucker snow-storm the first time? Remember when I was up to my frozen ass in snow, shovelling my driveway for two hours? Remember when I said, during that time, “Gee, this is GREAT! More snow, please!”

Remember that? I was being SARCASTIC.

Loser.

“She’s into lizards, she’s into snakes,
he’s into trauma - still got the shakes!”

Jitters. Ya know, I don’t get the jitters any more when a show comes up! I got ‘em the first Organical show I played, but that was mostly because I was pulling notes out of my ass. And we didn’t have a drummer, so we had to play to a backing track. And the club’s stage sound sucked. My bass-playing is about as tight as my 7th-grade art teacher and on top of that, I can’t keep time in a box. It was brutal. I was sure I’d be fired from the band if I wasn’t such a fucking awesome person. A lot has changed since then: I am batting around .500 for correct bass notes, I can play without constantly looking at the frets (all the better to see your adoring faces, my delicious fans!), and so far, I have not forgotten to wear pants.

But I gotta say, I’m a little jittery about the upcoming show. Good-jittery, not bad-jittery. The songs are sounding good in rehearsal, it’s been a while since we last played live, I’ve never played at the Drake before and there’s real good mojo in the band, so I’m a more than a little excited (I’m not wearing any thin T-Shirts, if you know what I mean…). I think we really have our groove-on, and even though it’s a short set at Elvis Monday, it’s chock-full o’ tasty hardness. Just like my pants.

And look: I have ended three paragraphs with the word pants. I am great. D’oh! Pants!

ps - that opening quote was from Van Der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill. Not many people know that Mark “Luke” Hammill is his step-brother. They were apparently very close - the best of friends - and, sharing an interest in all things anatomical, often played abominable “games” with small rodents they snared in home-made traps made of discarded razor blades and muffin-tins. Parents, teachers and phychologists all agreed it was best to separate the two, and thus they parted at the tender age of nine: Mark stayed in the USA and Peter was shipped off to a “reform school for especially sullen boys” in England. They had made a pact to meet again, to study animal husbandry at Cambridge. Of course, boys are boys, and the only natural course was for one of them to become a catchpenny actor and the other, a brooding troubadour. It’s all true.

I just wanted to point out, to all of you people that might be stumbling into our abode, that we are in beta.  That means if something isn’t working.   Beta.   If you notice a spelling mistake for instance. Beta.   If Ed is posting blog entries about putting things in slots.  Beta.  

Holy Hell, if gmail can still be in beta years after launching publicly I figure we have a little bit of time.

I am not a child of the space age.  I desperately wanted to be, and fooled myself into thinking I was for a long time.  But no.  Take this whole inter-web thing.  (Please!  haha!)  That demon bitch-goddess of digital tube-ways has become hell-bent on making my life an unrelenting series of frustratingly inexplicable mysteries.  I just want to use the inter-web as God intended: porn, e-mail and eBay.  I don’t know how to download a song.  I don’t know what a podcast is.  I’m still awaiting a response from Prince Ibrahim Abubaka of sunny Nigeria to tell me he got his Western Union Transfer safely (he’s being exiled, you know - and by his own family!!).

And now this.  Blogging.  I’ve never blogged before.  And if onomatopoeia had it’s way, nobody would because it sounds like an obnoxious body function.  So OK, technology, you win.  I am throwing in the towel.  But not before wiping my sweaty blogspot on it.  Oh, there will be blog.  I will blog.  And  what better way to dive into this new frontier than to share another example of my addle-mindedness…

The other night, after rehearsal, the band was talking of rock-and-roll days gone by.  During the chit-chat, John mentioned the  Bootsauce album Sleeping Booty.   That album came out, lo those many years ago, and I giggled at the title much the same way I giggle at farts, but it took John’s expert delivery  of said title phrase […Sleeping Booty — pause — looks over — repeat with oral italics and a grin: *Sleeping Booty*] for me to actually “get it”.   As God  as my witness, I would have gone through the rest of my life not getting the pun of Sleeping Booty.

Holy cow.  That’s funny.

The same thing happened with George Clinton’s (brilliant) “Do fries go with that shake?” when, on the Simpsons, Moe said it to Homer.  I seriously thought that song was about fast food until then.

What is wrong with me?  What gene am I missing that prevents me from getting puns of a slightly ribald nature?  In music specifically.  And while I’m at it, you know what else I have trouble with?  Putting things into slots. But that’s a topic for another time.

OK, bye!
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Now playing: “Touch My Soft-Spot” - the Fontanels