Springsteen reminds me of Beat poetry. He's like doing heavily orchestrated Beat poetry.

I'm going to do a series of video portraits of some people i know. I've been thinking about this for three years.

I'm really struck by what a good singer Frank Jr is. I going to look at his work.

this is the most beautiful prefab house I've ever seen. I want one.

Check out the live show footage of Le Look

The Le Look show. Ryan, Massimo and Steve were incredible and the National is a nice place to play and the lighting person was great and we got some video taken by Ryan's co-worker, and I had some b-roll on my little camera. I'll edit together something nice and post it on youtube so you can see what it is we do.

I love how simple this song is. This song is the foundation of every european hit song ever since. Can't you hear the netherlands and germany and russia and greece and italy in this song.

I'd like to put on a music festival where at no time do people need to wear hearing protection, and there's even heavy bands playing. Where only the vocals are going through the PA and it's balanced with what the band has going on, on the stage.

I've been thinking a lot about how live music and especially live electric music is plagued by bad sound mixing. To the point where the music that was intended is so far removed from what is blasting through the speakers, that what could be a fun night just turns into a torture chamber for deafness. People enter a room and together watch their dreams of a good show die along with their hearing. Until people get a clue, which i'm guessing will never happen, shows will get bigger and badder. It will be videos and downloads that will be the way to enjoy music, not to suffer at the hands of sound engineers. It's possible venues have figured out that if they make the music so loud that people can't hear themselves talk or think, that they'll buy more beer and make more money. And it might be word from the office telling the soundperson to ruin the show, on purpose.

Every band should have their own sound person. Even if it's someone to set the final levels and oversee that the show isn't a total waste of everyone's time given that the volume doesn't permit the music to be heard right.

If I see another stack of PA's shaped like a dinosaur's spine up in front of a live stage....anyway, it's a bad sign when you see more that two PA's gracing the sides of the stage.

It's one thing when the band chooses to set their amps loud to make a certain sound or play with feedback. it's quite another when it's processed through an even bigger sound system ( almost always unnecessary) and EQ'ed beyond all recognition. What once maybe sounded 70's and heavy, might come out sounding late 80's or worse still- current.

I think, now that I've seen David Bowie and Iggy Pop perform, I'm good. I don't need to go back to hall of darkness and have my sense of hearing stripped from me.

I sort of like this .

I've been taking more band photos. If anyone wants a portrait done, let me know. Or if you need a music video made. My specialty is super fast production and low cost amazing videos.

Ryan's invited his friend Steve to play guitar for the Le Look, battle of the bands show sept 18 at le national. We're going to do the songs live instead of mp3 as a duo. I'm hopefully going to find a great drummer and i hope to get the show videotaped and recorded. It's a beautiful hall, should have perfect sound.

HANNIBAL. So nice and he made sept 5 shine like a superstar.

At some point i will elaborate into an almost book-length description of my visit to monticello ny this weekend.

I slept in my stationwagon after the shows and karaoke were all done and dawn tried to re-arrange the universe.

I arrived at All Tomorrow's Parties and realized who-all was playing, I hadn't checked with any real scrutiny beforehand, just trusting their judgement. Ten minutes after i checked in, Iggy pop took the stage and ripped through an amazing re-creation of his stooges record.

I'm overwhelmed even thinking about the weekend and everything that took place. Somehow Ron Jeremy, sitting in the bar,ended up being audience to my dancing until dawn to quality 60's music. A dance marathon that was 15 years overdue.

Sunday was my birthday. I started it out wondering if I shouldn't leave early because I had come alone to the festival and I didn't want to spend my birthday without a friend. But something told me to stay for the early evening show and it was there that I saw Hannibal do stand up. He ended up rescuing my birthday.

Jim Jarmusch's EP for SQURL is amazing. I got a copy of his cd from him after his q and a with thurston moore. The greatest oversight by ATP was that Jim Jarmusch's band didn't play. My only complaint about the weekend was the soundmen were criminally ruining sets by mixing the whole thing too loud and EQ-ing the s#$% out of the low end so that every kick drum hit or low bass note hummed and ricocheted all over the tin can of a room, making my clothes vibrate from the aftershock. The mounds of PA covering every inch of the stage were enough to bring down mt everest with one whack on the E string. Crumbling to dust any semblance of the band's intended sound. I overheard some Quebequois guys in the audience lamenting, in french, the sound and the placement of the PA.

It was with great regret that i had to leave the hall partway through a lot of sets as the overblown mush made it impossible to enjoy a great many of the bands.

My wish for ATP is that they truly represent the sound the band wishes to achieve. If the drum doesn't hum and vibrate to begin with, then don't give it new qualities. Just because some engineer made high tech EQ-ing gear doesn't mean it should process the whole sound of the band into an unrecognizable state.

It was really fun playing L'escogriffe last night, opening for Silk Screaming. Two guys were behind it right from soundcheck, murmuring Besoin D'amour when I walked by (that was the song we tried out). And later at the last song they came out and bowed at the stage like "We're not worthy". that was really nice of them. And the super nice bass player from Silk Screaming gave us a glowing review of the show. I really like french, i have only a 6th grade level of vocabulary, but that doesn't mean i can't say all i need to about love and being in a club, and I have an ok accent from having studied french from grade 1 to 6. L'Escogriffe is super cute. I look forward to the next show on the 18th. The battle of the bands at Le National.