I've woken up before the others, doing a quick post before I jump in the bath tub (don't judge me!) and get ready for this pair of shows we're about to play. We weren't planning on doing any shows right now; the process of getting this record out has engulfed our summer and, I can finally say, the finish line might be in sight. But alas, we were offered two wonderful shows in two days, one in Nashville and one in Athens, GA.

We've only played in Nashville once before. We played with a blues band and, two hours into their set, I walked up to them to see how much longer they had when they responded "oh, there's another band tonight? We didn't know."

Our obligitory we-haven't-played together-in-a-while set runthrough last evening was really comforting. It's not that we forget how to play the songs, but sometimes things like keyboard settings and pedal switches get lost on us after a few weeks of non-Dynamo related activities.

Our individualized non-Dynamo activities as of late:

-I've been working on records in our basement for these guys and this guy, as well as writing for this and this and teaching some of these.

-Norm has been driving these around and occasionally playing these in this.
-Griffin just went here with these people right after spending time
here.

-Aaron has been pushing one of these around and learning a lot of these songs on one of these.

Take Out the Trash, Gettin' Ya Cash Like 'em Fast...

you know that thing in your email that's referred to as a spam folder? when checking the band email account, or the more affectionately dubbed dynamail, sometimes i think i'm the only one who ever empties it out. but, there is the occasional important message that is accidentally sent into the spam folder, so i've taken on the habit of checking out the subjects and senders before i delete them.

with that being said, i'm sure everyone is familiar with the usual "Policelink Scholarships," or "Shopping Spree Department," or "Deeds for Dollars," or even "Work from Home." but today, the sender line read !!!PANDA RESEARCH!!! (note: these exclamations were included in the line. they are not my own.) needless to say, i thought that was really funny.

oh. so, here...

On a lighter note...

...or at least on a note that doesn't involve talking shit, there's a new Livin' the Dream article on Crawdaddy today.

ALSO, remember Emperor X? Not that he's really gone anywhere, but he's been hiding out and working on a 4 part album called The Blythe Archives. Griffin bought the vinyl of volume one on tour and I finally got around to listening to it. It's so so so unbelieveably good. He still has that bedroom pop home recording lo-fi thing going on, but there is a lot of crazy drum experimenting stuff that he hasn't done before and a little bit of Steve Reich hidden in the mix. There are some clips on his website, as well as previews of future Blythe Archive volumes.

Blythe Archives is a pretty insane concept. First off, it's named after Blythe, California, a city where Chad (Emperor X) was in a car accident on tour once. A few months later, when we did a tour as his backing band, our van broke down just past the California/Arizona border and the only logical fix was to get towed back to Blythe. Chad went and visited the automobile graveyard where all of his gear rested while we drank Thunderbird wino wine and swam in a motel pool at 4 AM (or at least Aaron did).

The other genius thing about Blythe Archives is that, with each released volume, Chad is hiding cassette tapes of non-album bonus material in a predetermined city with clues on the album for where they could be found. Once the code is cracked and the tapes are found, the material on the cassettes is posted online. Wow.....

No's in unison.

So there's this band called Simian Mobile Disco. I don't know much about them other than: A. They get a metric fuck-ton of press and B. We have the same initials. So now I'm noticing that websites are starting to abbreviate them in news stories, which means that about once a week I get excited like "what?!?! we're playing a festival in Brussels?!" for exactly one second before I realize what is really happening.

We played two shows this weekend.

Chicago was rad. Played with Russian Circles (soooooo good), barely understood the eastern European soundguy during soundcheck (I think at some point he was asking to hear the keyboard rig and I could have SWORN he was saying "manhattan"), enjoyed a large cooler of Goose Island Beers (my favorite microbrewery, except maybe New Belgium), ate well (pulled pork!), etc.

On the way up to Chicago, we listened to the new Ra Ra Riot album. As you can imagine, it's wonderful. I think I may have gotten too attached to the old recordings of some of the songs though; even though the fidelity and performances on the record are far superior to their EP, it will take me some getting used to.

Played with The Mae Shi in St. Louis last night. We played 3 dates with them about 3 years ago (gas was $1.89/gallon), and it was great seeing how much more insane they are now. It was like going to a performance art rock show in 2005 at Lemp Arts Center, except the music was great, there wasn't a creepy old guy making everybody uncomfortable, and there were girls in the crowd.