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Introducing…The Heavy Metal Lunch
March 24th, 2007 under blog. [ Comments: none ]

Hey Peoples, I’ve started up a podcast with my friend Don (mentioned before in this journal) and it’s called (naturally) The Heavy Metal Lunch. The best way to describe it is the two of us just eating fried chicken, drinking beer and talking (in our regular uncensored way) about Metal. We’ve recorded one episode so far and I think it’s pretty funny. Even listening to it for “review” purposes I was laughing. Out loud, while listening to it on my iPod on campus. Great stuff.

So please do go and give it a listen. More episodes will be coming soon.

heavymetallunch.blogspot.com

and if you’re a myspacer, myspace.com/theheavymetallunch


Musicians: please give this a look
March 18th, 2007 under blog. [ Comments: none ]

I could have sworn that I’ve mentioned this before, but I can’t find the journal entry. Ah well.

OK, if you are a musician or want to be a musician go to this site: http://www.obscurica.com/sloppy_seconds.html and do it.

I think it’s a fantastic idea and I really want all of the musical people I know to contribute. I did. I’m on track 2. I still need to submit some Protean Mean, and I might submit more from older bands. We’ll see.


Bass
March 16th, 2007 under blog. [ Comments: none ]

Last night was the second Protean Mean gig. I liked this one better than our first one, I think on the whole we played better (but also worse at times) and playing for 35 minutes was a TON better than going for 10. Like I’ve noted before, mistakes are going to happen…esp. when it’s me playing. There was some sort of flub in every song, but I’m not trying to focus on that. Surrounded By Trees, on the other hand, was a horrible, mistake-filled mess. I have NEVER in my life played a song so horribly. Julie said she didn’t notice I made any mistakes in it, and that’s crazy because I think I f’d up something just about every measure. It was so bad that it was almost comical. After the song Jenn and I just looked at each other and just kinda laughed because we knew it was so bad. I’m not too hard on myself for it though, because it IS a difficult song to play. It’s by far the most difficult one we have. It just needs more practice. OK, a LOT more. That’s OK though.

We debuted 5 songs last night and that was cool. I always like debuting new material.

For me, the best part of the show was how it felt to play bass on stage again. I’m really not too comfortable playing guitar (my singing last night, while not always perfect, didn’t freak me out one bit), but every time I put on the bass it was just an amazing feeling. Natural, happy, confident, relaxed…all that. I miss it terribly. It definitely makes me want to do more of it.

So, on the whole I think it was good. A ton of mistakes by both of us, but there were also a lot of good things done by both of us. We really just need to take our individual and collective practicing more seriously.

Happy early St. Patrick’s Day!

and, Hook ‘em Horns!


#1
March 6th, 2007 under blog. [ Comments: none ]

Well, I’ve had a few days to digest the gig from Saturday night. It wasn’t until I watched the video the following day that I had a better feel for what happened. I’m always nervous before debuting a new band and since this one is so important to me it’s a little bit more nerve racking. I think for PM and back to 3 Penny Opera - those were the two band debuts that really had me on edge. Thankfully I didn’t attempt to play lap steel on Saturday like I did at that first 3PO gig! Speaking of 3PO, on the way to the gig I had the iPod on my Top 1000 mix and happily 3PO’s Adam & Eve came on. It put me in a nice frame of mind to not only hear myself playing live (3PO’s 3rd gig) but also that it’s such a bouncy and happy song.

“YO”, I say.

We had a packed (coffee)house so that was cool. The weirdness that I felt from the gig happened because we only played 2 songs (and that’s not enough time to get a feel for the audience or the music) and I was also using a strange guitar. I used Don’s guitar since it made more sense than switching things around and all that. It was significantly heavier so that threw me off a bit. Like I said, we only did 2 songs - 10K & Hanging Up the Dream - so I was actually in a weirder headspace and more nervous AFTER the show than before or during. Everyone that said anything to us had nothing but positive comments so it seemed that everyone liked it. I had no idea how it went. I knew that I made a few mistakes (I honestly don’t think I’ve ever played a perfect gig), but they were minor. So yeah, I really had no idea how it went. Both Don and Shades played really good sets (and Jenn sounded wonderful during the whole evening) so that was great.

Sunday I went over to JennEric’s to watch the tape of the show (thank you, Eric) and discuss web stuff. After watching the tape (before plowing into the excellent brunch) I came away with a better opinion of the gig. Yeah, there were mistakes, but we sounded good, I looked fairly relaxed and the mistakes I made weren’t really audible. So, my new opinion of the gig is that we were “pretty good”. 2 songs is still too short to make an accurate assessment, but we were good for what it was. I still think it’s incredibly awesome of Don to cut his set short that we could play.

Video of the 2 songs is in the process of getting perfected so we can post them online. I’ll obviously post a link here, but we’re going to be posting it to the .com, myspace & on youtube. Hooray!

So, the important news coming out of our practice last night is that we are indeed playing again on the 15th. It’ll be another “Double-Double Duty” show with us, Don & then Shades headlining. Unless something weird happens this will be the last time that Protean Mean and Shades of Winter are on the same bill. I know Jenn can handle doing our set and then Shade’s set, but it’s not something we want to continue doing in the future. So catch history next Thursday in Durham! And yes, we’ll be playing a 30 minute opening set. Not everything we got, but it’ll be the best songs.

Gig info:

Protean Mean, Don de Leaumont & Shades of Winter
Thursday, March 15, 2007 (Ides of March!!)
Marvell Events Center
Durham, NC
time is still TBA for all 3 bands.