Come Another Tide

Wednesday June 9th

Unfortunately it slipped my mind to post this on the actual day that it happened but, I knew I would eventually get around to it. I was given the task of driving my brother and his wife to the airport so they could take a weeks long vacation in Seattle. My situation was that I had to get off work at my job at 8pm drive about an hour to Athens, GA and wake up in the morning to get them to the airport by 10am, and be at work at 11:30am. So, I get off an hour early I arrive at 8pm. Hurray! An hour early. I get a fish burrito from Cali-n-Tito's in town and lay on the couch the rest of the night trying to get comfortable so I can go to sleep fast. To my dismay, they went to bed around 12 or 1 in the morning. I was expecting to wake up early to get them to the airport early so I can make it to work on time. I was a little aggravated.

I woke up at 5:30am. Fuck. I maybe got like 4 hours of good sleep if I was lucky. I was told the previous night we would leave at 7am so we would leave me plenty of time to get to airport and leave time to get ahead of rush hour traffic. I was led astray again and we would not be leaving until later. I am now angry on account I was doing them a favor by driving them on the airport that I did not have to do, that I was taking my own time and gas to do so they could go on a week long vacation to Washington. I went out on the porch and pouted on the porch like a little bitch and refused to eat breakfast. Whilst Iris was watering her plants I walked back in to exchange some altercate words with Nathan about how angry I was. I was a ignorant colossus of death and gloom, a pile of gun powder near a sparkler ready to ignite.

We leave at 7:40am or so and I fucking slam on the gas. We're doing 85-90mph down the Athens interstate to the I-85 South intersection to ATL. Not many words were exchanged on account I was in a 'fuck off' type of mood. As we merged into the interstate there it was. Rush hour. What an asshole. I made the mistake of not getting into the HOV lane which is reserved for folks that have two or more passengers in their vehicle. In other words the VIP lane where everything goes quicker but it's all the way to the left and the exits are on the right. I drove like Steve McQueen in Bullit so I could grace the concrete which was designated for automobiles containing numerous passengers. At this point I'm not even giving a shit about the clock I'm just set on getting to the airport. My foot was killing me from the stop and go bumper to bumper traffic, no sunglasses, no food on account of my stubbornness. Fuck life. Let a frozen pile of shit fall from an airplane onto my car and end it all.

Eventually we mingled past all the traffic and neared the exit for the airport. Anticipation rattled my body for we were actually here and I had never driven to the airport before. Wow. I gradually grew from Mr. Grump Grump to a little wiener dog yelping with delight that my owner was taking for a walk around the neighborhood. I instructed my brother to plug up my iPhone and to select the iPod. I put on Naughty By Nature's Feel Me Flow. A grin illustrated across my cheek and my brother let out a snort of air followed by a smirk that rivaled mine. And we began to trade words of old rap singles that were popular in the early nineties and trips to Gainesville, GA during that era to visit our cousins. The track This is How We Do It by Montell Jordan came up and I later downloaded the song in honor of Gainesville. I had not heard that track in years. I drove us to the North Terminal and idled the KIA so they could excavate their luggage from the clutter in my car and I apologized to my brother who plainly said it was OK I'm clearly over it now. I would return to this same spot in a weeks time to take them home.

I got back on the interstate, headed North to Habersham so I could go to work. I had plenty of time after all. The sun was still low in the sky and not very bright. Wasn't particularly hot or humid so I let the windows down so my hair could flap in the wind. My iPod was still plugged up but not playing anything through my speakers. What could unleash the excitement that I had just accomplished something I thought was a great highlight of my week. I pressed the play button on Torche. And rode all the way back to Habersham. Got to work with half an hour to spare. Before I passed Gainesville I decided to spit in times face and pull of to get Chic-fil-a. When I got to work I was given the offer to work half a day that day, go home and sleep, and finish the rest of my tour on a Saturday. Legendary!

Come a Tide

Music Project and Bass Guitar

For anyone that knows me well..which is barely anyone, I've had a very unsuccessful music project called, "Them." Well, maybe a few people know it. Anyway, I never really decided on what direction to take it and I'm contemplating it right now. I've been on a recent binge of glorifying my bass guitar since in recent times I laid down the bass to pursue drumming. I didn't seriously think about playing the bass for quite sometime I was only trying to glorify the drums. I still enjoyed playing bass just not as much as before. That came from a lack of understanding what possibilities you could actually get out of the bass guitar and for so long I thought that every bass player wanted to be someone like, Les Claypool or Flea. That all there was to bass was complex placements of slaps and thumps. So, I strayed away from it when I started paying more attention to drummers, Dale Crover and Dave Lombardo.

One thing I've always found unique about myself that I'm sure other would find self-indulgence is that I face the fact I'm not an expert towards anything so that forces me to ask questions that wouldn't typically go together naturally with something. An example of this was when I read about in the early days of grunge, Dave Grohl would use his floor tom as a rack tom. I thought that was awesome and I couldn't think of any band this day and age that did that as far as I'd heard of. So, I took root and set out to accomplish that. Afterward I ended up with a 16" floor tom for my rack and a 18" floor tom. This left my kick drum awkwardly proportioned to the two drums. So, I go bigger and get a 26" kick drum and turn my old 24" kick drum into a flow tom, throw in a 19" and 20" crash, a 24" China, 24" ride and 14" high hat. Boom surely there are bigger sets but, this was mine and I loved it.



Earlier this year I began to play bass for my friends Kevin's band Robo. I picked up the bass once again, a little rusty at first but, I think I'm back at the potential I use to play at. I started paying more attention to styles like Jared Warren, Greg Anderson and Steve Tanner, who all prominently used Sunn O))) amps. I had a pretty decent bass cabinet from Kustom and a Peavy head with an octave controller build into it so I could easily shatter windows but, I wanted to begin to do more than just piss my mom off by being loud. I wanted to develop some character to my bass rig and get some unique tone and distinction. It started slow at first but in the past 2 weeks I've really started to roll with it. I played my first show with a Boss overdrive pedal and a a small 80 watt orange solid bass amp. It was loud and distorted and apparently caught the ears of some leach the was playing after us because he wanted to use my stuff. Second show, we did I used the big 650 watt Kustom and the Peavy head and by mistake left the octave switch on so the whole room shook. It wasn't until the end of the set I realized this was on when some members of a former local group we played with frequently said my bass was killer and I was a good addition to the band. I won't mention the third show I was playing like shit that night and the whole show was going to Hell.

I "studied" what pedals and equipment bands such as Boris and Sunn O))) used and also some stuff of Trevor Dunn's and listened to quite a number of their albums back and forth and picked and chose what kind of pedal board I wanted to set up. With the help of YouTube I got to hear these things in action and it helped me determine what I would start to build. I've been itching to play another show recently because I've been indulging these urges of progressing my bass skills and sound. I am now the proud owner of a Sunn O))) Beta Bass Head a solid state amp that is loud as fuck, and I couldn't be happier. I still have the Kustom cabinet but, hope to get a big old Ampeg. Just a few days ago I bought the bass to end all basses I hope to ever need which was a Rickenbacker model Diamond with active pick ups from my friend Juan Montoya. As far as pedals I've got a long way to go but, so far I still use my Digi-tech Whammy pedal and Boss overdrive and added a Dearmond Weeper with a stand Big Muff Pi. I plan to expand this board as I progress and will slowly reveal my master pedal board to achieve all the sound I choose to accomplish with them. No pun intended.

Here's what I often consider one of the best tracks I recorded in the early days of Them.

There's Something at My Window by Them

The Bride Screamed for A Small Turn of Human Kindness

The Melvins is a band who appreciates their fans way more than they let on to. They come out with a lot of goodies to keep their fans mouths wet with ambition, they tour at least once a year, and since 2006 have released a new album every two years at the beginning of the Summer. It was no doubt that the new release (the Bride Screamed Murder) was sure to not disappoint me or the rest of their fans. But, another favorite band of mine scheduled an unexpected release of their own. My home states native Athenians, Harvey Milk came out with A Small Turn of Human Kindness. Even though, I heard the Melvins album a whole month before I did Harvey Milks release. After much thought I actually prefer Harvey Milk's release over the Melvins' this time. The Bride Screamed Murder has all the formulas in which you would expect out of a Melvins song: scratchy guitar, fuzz drenched bass, and abnormal drum sequences. Talented is too little a word for it. But, as far as Harvey Milk's release I keep constantly referring to it as an unofficial score to theatrical movie. To be honest it reminds me of Melvins album Lysol, I think why there is so much appeal. Though they split the tracks up to be able to skip on the album there's no real need to the songs run together like it's a musical or one large track. Harvey Milk is a band that makes me proud to be a Georgian.

A New Direction

I stopped posting for a while on account my writing hadn't improved as much as I had hoped it would after starting this blog so, I've decided to give it another shot. My brother has started a blog of his own to keep his already superior writing skills sharp, so I should try improving mine. My initial purpose to starting this 'blog' in the first place was because I didn't see any good film blogs on the Internet at the time. I've since found some and it would be in my best interest if I didn't just do film reviews but, just do whatever.

On that note I just watched the second Twilight film, New Moon. A truly horrible film. I guess I can see the appeal to it if you were a teenage girl or a teenage boy who has the characteristics of a girl. The only funny feeling I get from watching these films are the embarrassment I get from the people who act in the these films. I understand every actor has to start somewhere but, Jesus there's better stuff out there. Viewing these films to me is the equivalent of watching Mr. Hands. Just the sheer shock of it.



I still have hope for Kristen Stewart though, She was in Adventureland and the Runaways. Just recently I she has been chosen to play in a film adaption of Jack Kerouac's On the Road that will either make or break her career once and for all.

Still Life (guest review by Nathan Loggins)

Roughly the last decade has seen the slow decline of some the biggest names in mainland Chinese cinema. Luminaries of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou have abandoned the simplistic and artful styles that made up films like Yellow Earth and The Story of Qiu Ju, and with perhaps an eye to China’s ever-growing foreign markets, have produced glossy, flamboyant period pieces that are nearly as foreign to domestic audiences as they are to those who flock to them in the West. This vacuum in art cinema has been filled by a new generation of directors who have focused their lens on daily life in a county that is marked by upheaval and perpetual social change that stems from breakneck economic development. The name that has received the most recognition as of late is Jia Zhangke, director of Unknown Pleasures, Platform and The World. His most recent feature length production, Still Life, has taken him from the margins of obscurity into the fold of world cinema, for which he received the 2006 Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Shunning any form of adornment, Jia’s films focus on the daily lives of ordinary people in some of the most underdeveloped regions of China. In Platform, a performance troupe-turned-rock band tours the back towns of north central China, finally ending up in the same place they started. The World follows the daily routines of migrant workers at an ambitious theme park in Beijing where famous global landmarks are recreated in miniature form for Chinese tourists. Every film captures the mundane life of those people absorbed in a country changing by the minute, but held just outside the benefits which are purported to follow--an endless waiting for something new or something better. Jia’s films unfold slowly with a deliberate pacing similar to Abbas Kiarostami or Hou Hsiao-hsien, marked by understated gestures and austerity, a far cry from Hero or Curse of the Golden Flowers.
Still Life takes its setting in a small town on the Hubei/Sichuan border, currently under destruction for the massive Three Gorges Dam project, which will bring cleaner energy to thousands more Chinese citizens, but has in the process destroyed innumerable local ecosystems and cultural landmarks, uprooting hundreds, if not thousands, of local residents, the subject of a recent documentary Up the Yangtze. The film opens with the return home of one of the two main characters, Han Sanming, hailing a motor-taxi to his old address, only to find it completely submerged below water. He proceeds to find work with a local demolition crew as he searches for his estranged wife and tries in vain to re-establish contact with his daughter who he hasn’t seen for 16 years. Wandering amid the rubble and chaos is the film’s other protagonist, Shen Hong, who is also looking for her spouse who has been incommunicado for quite some time. Even in the same town, the two’s paths never cross, and when they finally accomplish their missions, the results are anticlimactic at best. In the meantime, they form ephemeral relationships with others amid the disarray that surrounds them. People wander in and out of scenes as in a Fellini movie: a young teenager singing saccharine love songs, a lackluster proprietor of a small prostitution ring, a civil engineer showing off his elaborate light display to a group of businessmen. All the while, there is the noise of sweaty demolition crews toiling in the humid haze, amid fumigators and crews marking new buildings for destruction and projected stages of future water levels.
The scenes that unfold, less like a movie than the titular style of painting, show a section of society crushed under the boot of so-called progress. Air conditioning here is either absent or useless in the sticky climes of southern China. The music emanating from old radios and television sets is from decades past. When not repetitively hacking away with sledgehammers, barely-clad men sit in idle groups, half-heartedly wiping sweat from their faces. There seems to be such a tacit acceptance of the tumult that has marked their otherwise monotonous existence, that no one seems to notice, or care, when a flying saucer wobbles in over the mountains and then exits as nonchalantly as it came, or when a building inexplicably rockets itself off into the hazy skyline. In a world coming slowly undone, these are minor details to be observed and then discarded before moving on to the next routine task.
But it would be too easy to attribute some air of condemnation to Jia’s projects. He never seems to be pointing the finger, or making a value judgment. He merely documents what he sees around him, and does so to aesthetically stunning effect. The subjects and themes may speak to the viewer in any number of ways, but they are, after all, just daily life in a country whose citizens make up over one third of the world’s population.

trailer