(Louis and Louis)

So many things to report - let's see if I can hit a few of the more important happenings:

Louis had his first birthday yesterday. He stayed pretty well entertained the whole time, thanks in part to Tina's parents, Big Louis and Cathie, who came up from Cali to observe the event. We had BBQ steak and cake and then went to go see Cosmo play some baseball, out the old Elmira way. His team won and Cosmo's keen hitting was part of the reason. Fun, fun, fun.

Mr Random came ove today to record the Underlings' practice for his radioNOT blog. I think he said he'll have it posted in a day or two. The segment will be part interview, part music and all sweat, since it wsa 96 degrees Fahrenheit outside and about 110 degrees inside the garage. Phew! I think our playing was better on some songs than on others, but overall we rocked it good and can't wait to hear the results. Be sure to check out his other fine podcasts as well - get hip to listening to radio in a pod-style. Time to plug in and pod-out, geekoids of the internet!

I've really been liking our fine, hot weather here in Eugene. The first half of June was bleak - cold, rainy, miserable - not at all like June should be. Now. it feels like summer is finally on and I'm glad.

My biggest bro comes tonight with his family - that would be Darrow - and my youngest bro - Walter - is here tomorrow. Plus, Softball tomorrow and of course, work tomorrow night. I think I keep busy, but I still feel lazy at heart.

Peace out!

-E

The Underlings live at Luckey's 6-6-08 from Ed Cole on Vimeo.
Video taken by Mr. Random

Holy Shit!!!! This vid re-charged my batteries and now I am ready to take on the day:
Meat Puppets live, probably from 1986/87/88

When I was a kid, I stayed over at my friend Bar's house a lot. Bar had a big family with lots of older and younger siblings, so it was a real zoo - people always stealing each others socks and constantly walking in on each other while in the bathroom. I was basically an only child, since most of my sibings head left the house by the time I was ten, and I loved the chaos that happened at my surrogate family's house.
One thing I remember about staying over at Bar's was the breakfast cereal. Food was at a premium for his brood, and if you ever had anything good to eat, you had better eat it before anyone else got to it. Breakfast cereal was at the top of the food chain, and on top of all cereals was Ohs!, the crunchy sugary prince of cereals. Bar used to hide his box of Ohs! from the rest of his family, but if I was lucky, he would share them with me, subsequently stashing the box from the prying eyes and fingers of the less fortunate members of clan McKinnon.
So, you must understand how I felt when Tina came home with a box of Ohs! a few weeks ago. I felt like pouring myself a huge bowl and locking myself in the closet, where passers by would wonder what the hell all the crunching was about.

Things are good. Tina is still painting the house and it is looking great in here. Hues of dusty yellow, olive green, light-ish blue and spring green are all around. It is very nice to live inside a color-aquarium.














(Yeltsin rocking Pee-town)
We went up to Portland over the weekend, where Tina was working with her Ovulators on their upcoming CD. The bit I heard was sounding great to my ears; can't wait to hear how it sounds when it becomes a finished product. I spent most of my PDX time hanging out with baby Louis, walking around the neighborhoods of Southeast portland, sipping coffee and taking in the sights sound , smells and SUNLIGHT that happened to touch down upon Oregon that fine two days.
Friday night, I went down to Kelly's Olympian to catch Yeltsin's CD release party. I saw many Eugene and Portland friends. I arrived too late to catch the Tractor Operator set, but people said it went over well. Excellence contains former Eugene Hot For Chocolate bassist Geof Unger and they had a cool, PDX-pop sound with baritone guitar, keys and drums rounding out their lineup.
I really enjoyed Yeltsin's set - really loose and rocking. Jivan was good on the mic, really working the PDX crowd. And a good crowd it was - plenty of Portland folks are hip to our hometown band.

Okay! Off to be useful!

Tina is painting the house this week, so shit's all askew. Furniture here, piles of books there - it reminds me of the way I used to live when I was a single man. I much prefer our more common state of ABSOLUTE ORDER around the house. True peace of mind can only enter when all things are in the absolute right place; no stray pins or discarded eyebrow hairs. ORDER! Soon, I will be tranquil again; for now, I am in flux.
The band is still working towards our gaol of finishing our cd by oblique forms of non-action. As the clock of humanity 'clicks' around, all the deeds leading up to our cd release will somehow take care of themselves. Money will appear from somewhere and tasks will be completed. Are we humans really the ones making these actions, or are we only the tools of a giant galactic force that we do not understand? Or, is the desire to create a CD just another step in humanity's compulsory mating ritual ? I guess a hundred years or more ago, a musician would compose a big piece of music instead of making a CD, and thereby be deemed a worthy mate. These days, technology has influenced our behavior to a high degree.
Must...make...coffee...check cell phone...blog...maneuver car without hitting anyone...and go to work. Now.

I have not been 'feeling it' lately. Too much real life stuff going on to feel like rotting my brain in front of www radiation. I think that several others in my blogosphere are in the same state of mind. Myspace is the ultimate time-waster, yet I still login for band stuff and friend communication. I like reading Dan' s and Justin's blogs and I always check out Ken's various pages; that and email are pretty much the extent of my online caring right now.
I was quite saddened this morning to learn that a friend of Tina's, Jessie, a woman we met in our childbirth class, recently suffered the loss of both her baby and her father in a car accident in Idaho. Jessie's baby, Sage. was the same age as Louie and they were friends from baby play dates. Kind of sobering, as it always is when someone you know dies in an untimely way. My heart goes out to Jessie and her husband; no one should have to endure such a harsh loss.

I went with my bros Zookie and Carl down to John Henry's to see the most recent incarnation of Agent Orange on Tuesday night. It was also Slayer Carl's birthday, so drinks were had and spilled, fun was splooshing in the night. Agent Orange were not bad, although I always have mixed feelings about older punk groups re-forming for glory and money (haha not a lot of $$$). Mike Palm's guitar playing sounded keen, and I liked the newer, surf-style instrumental that they opened with. I was, as usual, dismayed with the middle-aged mosh-pit, but apparently people were having fun. I couldn't take the entire set, but it was fun to hear some classics - "Everything Turns Grey", "Too Young To Die" and a few others that I forget now. Another show, another few brain cells down the drain, splooshing, splooshing...

Keep waking up into"life"like un-dream. Eyes open.Time=running. Clock tick-tick-ticking, into the future. Leap day and I haven't yet.
I can't wait for 3:66pm today - I'll be at Museum of Unfine Art, hoping to trade time for space.

NEWS FLASH: Local Space Money May Not Be The First Space Money!

An unfortunate Google search revealed that some nefarious forces of finance in the U.K. have already been pioneering the combination of Space Money with old-fashioned, corrupt, Planet Earth Time-Money!

You can read about the bogus concept of money for the super-rich space-tourists of the future here.

This year's Eugene Record Convention was a blast. Cosmo and I rolled out of bed at the un-Godly hour of 9am and picked up Mr. Zook and dragged our greasy asses down to mingle with the great unwashed masses of collector nerds from our local music community. I saw too many friends to mention and made some good scores on albums that I'd never had. Among my faves this year were an original press of Television's Adventure, on red vinyl no less and also albums by Tom Verlaine, Thin Lizzy, The Clash, 86 (the first band of Jesus Lizard drummer Mac MacNeily) and Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet. I spent more than I expected but it was worth it. A good time was had by all and then we went for coffee.
Friday night, the Underlings played with our good friends Valiant Arms and Long Tall and Ugly at Luckey's Club Cigar. I'll post some pics at my long-neglected flickr and then I'll throw the link up when I get a chance(*later: here's that link). The funniest moment of the night was when this fucked-up drunk guy jumped up onstage with V.A. and started singing some screaming nonsense to one of their songs. At first, it sounded like some manic, Cleveland nightmare music, like Rocket From the Tombs or something - the drunk was really on to something approaching art. I captured a few seconds of video before they threw the guy out, which I'll post when I get a chance. Another fun night of rock and roll.

I was putting up flyers, as per usual, and doing my route around town, to various establishments and bulletin boards, when I walked into the Museum of Unfine Art and learned from Shawn about Prudence the Pug's passing. I am deeply saddened that a much-loved pug has left our community of artists, musicians, weirdos and general Good-nics.
Prudence was a friend of mine; she often licked my hand and snurfed me from time to time. In '98 and '99, I was going over to Shawn's house quite often to jam with our various noisy noise-nerd friends such as Guy Tyler, Mark Stern and occasional others. Prudence was always there, a real fixture in Shawn's art-house. I knew her when she was fairly spry; I remember the last few times I saw her, she was showing the tired indifference of age. But she still gave me a good snurf.

Prudence the Pug, Citizen of Eugene and Springfield, fondly remembered, sorely missed, R.I.P.

Man, I had a great time going out to see the Circle Jerks last night. I have to admit, they've never been my favorite band, but I've always appreciated their humor, energy and old-school punk credentials. It was cute to see all the punk kids, with their freshly-shaved mohawks, going at it like animals. The mosh pit was big but relatively friendly. I saw a few people really hit the dust, and one big guy in particular took a faceplant right in front of Zookie and I. Ouch! It felt like chaos swept through the room; the people wanted a chance to go crazy and they got it. The Band was tight and energetic; Keith Morris was funny on the mic; the bass player looked like Jerry Garcia. I had fun hanging with my friends and having a beer. Good times, great oldies...

Life is a blast. I like to have a good time, all the time.

Last weekend, we had Mr. and Mrs. Random and Dawn Baby and Zookie over for a lovely dinner on Saturday night. I had to leave early for my gig down at Luckey's, which was a fun evening of rock. We played with the thick-sounding Filthiest People Alive (pop songs with a hard, dual-guitar attack, keys and technical drums), and a side-project band of theirs called Hand Held, which was just keys, bass and drums. Sorely missed was Chance Became Fate, a band I've wanted to share a bill with for quite some months now, who had to cancel due to a family death. Please accept my condolences on the loss. Hopefully, we'll get to share a bill in the near future.
Other than reading friend's blogs and spending what time I do have on working, hanging out with loved ones, practicing with the Underlings and untangling Christmas lights, I really haven't been doing much. Next time you see me, poke me and then tell me to work harder, shut up and quit complaining.

It's raining outside. It is raining like the clouds really mean it. And the wind, it is a'blowin. I love the onset of winter, with its intensity, coldness and menace. Weather like this makes me appreciate staying indoors, cranking up the heat and having some coffee while listening to punk 45's through a one-speaker stereo. I also got some cleaning done.

My friend, Justin Hrabe, singer from my old band Garden Weasel, has started a blog that features good punk rock mp3's from days gone by. Please check it out - it features songs from a KHSU radio broadcast done in February 1991. I'm contributing quite a few tracks to it that should be posted soon.

I'm preparing new mp3's of many of my old songs. I'll have several ready for consumption by anyone interested.

Peace & Rock,

The baby is asleep; time to blog!

I am stoked to be going into the studio with my boys on Saturday and Sunday. We've been practicing hard, working out the loose ends of our tune-age. I think the coolest thing about being in a band is just working with other people. Creating music is a collaborative art-form. The music is really just a by-product of the personality mesh of the membership of the band. Think of any band that has had a membership change. Did the music not dramatically change, at least in some way? Joy Division to New Order. Sex Pistols to PIL. Beatles to post-Beatles. Miles Davis to ...Miles Davis. The personalities and the co-workmanship, that's the cool shit.

Okay, enough metaphysical B.S. I had a friend at work tell me that he bought a working 1948 Fender Deluxe amp at a garage sale for $20, which he promptly turned around and sold on ebay for some obscene sum of money. I'm still not sure I even believe the story, but if it's true...makes me think, "Why not me?" Just once, it would be cool to find that rare piece of gear at a garage sale and just KEEP IT and make music with it. Oh well, better luck next weekend.

I've been blowing my brain out, listening to Husker Du mp3's on Seeqpod. The Huskers' music has really been hitting me in a good way, lately.

I noticed this blog as a result. I love the way mp3 blogs are making once hard-to-locate music available to listeners. I love the way the music industry is shaking under the duress of the changing nature of commercial music consumption.

It's a virt-virt-virtual world.

Sometimes, you need a little Eugene Chadbourne to help you make sense of it all:

Uz Jsme Doma at WOW Hall 11/01/2007 from Ed Cole on Vimeo.

I had a great time at Uz Jsme Doma a few nights back at the WOW Hall. I am a total geek for my favorite Czech band. It was sad to me that there were only about 25 other folks in attendance, but I always come away from an UJD show feeling inspired and re-charged. Next time, don't be a rock slacker - turn off the television, smash your iphone and go and see them when they pass through your town.
















(Capillary Action in action)

I also enjoyed the experimental jazz splatter-rock of CapillaryAction, from Philadelphia, PA. Great arrangements and playing on guitar, drums, keys and voice. They reminded me very much of Mr. Bungle musically; they generally sounded like neo-rockers that perhaps had collided with a busload of avant-guard classicists and then fell off of a cliff and violently landed on a station-wagon full of stoned be-boppers. Not too shabby in my seldom-to-be-humble opinion-especially for a mere three-piece.

Yay for music!

-Ed

Thank Dog for Halloween! My favorite (mostly) non-denominational holiday. I rushed home from work, bags of candy in tow and then proceeded to assist the wild assortment of trick-or-treaters that came by our place. Totally corny, but absolutely fun.
Tonight, I'm going to see one of my favorite bands, Uz Jsme Doma, who hail from Prague. I can't recommend them highly enough - like NoMeansNo mixed with Zappa-esque horns and very-technical arrangements. Their sound is a triumph of the human spirit over the dominant forces of evil! I hope any and all Eugene rock fans come down to the WOW hall to Czech it out.