...creep into place...

I couldn't help looking into the bathroom mirror and laughing hysterically. What a ride. As I walked out of the airport facilities I thought to myself: either I need some tums or I should just keep away from sausage biscuits, not sure as of January 3rd 8pm Tokyo time, 6am at my current location of Albany New York. Albany airport to be exact (about time they provided free wifi here!). Newark, New Jersey doesn't do the same though, so this will be my last communication until I'm back in the Japanland.

This is a red-eye flight of sorts, even though I woke up at 2:30am this morning. Fairly ridiculous when you think about it.

I'm not in disbelief I'm going back to Tokyo, I merely find myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. And possibly the unbearable light of being as well. Huge thanks and much love to all my friends and family who made my vacation so enjoyable. Also, list of awesome bands I saw in the States over vacation, that I'd recommend to you all:


After the Fall
Born Low
Damnation Alley
Make do and Mend
Down to Nothing
Forfeit
Oak and Bone
Trapped Under Ice
Sun God

I could through myspace links in there... or you could just google ANY of those names and the word myspace. C'mon, you won't.

If anyone really wants to know what's in my head, or perhaps why I'm going back to foreign lands and am content to do so, you need look no further:



"Go to work, go to school
Get an education, so you won't be a fool
Be a doctor, PHD, all that shit, that's not for me

All my life people tell what to say
This is my life live it my own way

Was so blind could not see
figures of authority, always standing behind me,
ready to come down on me

All my life people tell what to say
This is my life live it my own way" - Sick of it All, "My Life"

I now leave you as a "quote" in typical E.F.N.Y. fashion, the first track off of After the Fall's latest CD "Fort Orange." It's the best work yet from an amazing local band that has been together almost 10 years... and who I should see in Tokyo this year. Go dudes!! Fort Orange is the original name of my beautiful hometown of Albany, NY, by the way. I don't have the lyric sheet with me so here's most of it from memory.

"December 31st marks the day when Albany police opened fire on Lark street and killed an innocent man. Tell me what the fuck were you thinking, were you following standard procedure, to protect and serve?.... David Scraringe was only 24, he had a family not just another name.... those cops never saw any punishment to this day" After the Fall - "Fort Orange"

I used to hate eggplants, now I just hate car accidents

Yesterday I was jogging and somehow managed to hurt my left knee. What does this mean for me? No more jogging for at least a week, and limping up and down all the stairs to and from the subways. Even the microwave and the toilet are a downstairs trek from my apartment. NO FUN.

I also managed to pay last month's rent, after discovering that the money was still sitting in my account this month. It's an understandable mistake I think, I mean the menu on the ATM is all in Japanese! (and if you take more than 15 seconds to try and read something, it assumes you've walked away and cancels your transaction) What got me was 3 options at the end about keeping receipts and yadayada, 1) was no and 2) was yes. Usually it's the other way around, at least where I'm from.

You may be wondering about the ambiguous title, so I'll get right down to it here. About 2 weeks before I left for Japan, I had planned one last roadtrip with my friends Rich, Laura and Gabe to Virginia Beach. The day before we left I had a tattoo appointment in Saratoga to get this little number done:

It's a Wolf-o-puss, of course!

We had already done outlines and most of the color in a previous appointment, this was just about 2 hours of "finishing touches." So it was raining, and I was in kind of a hurry to get to Saratoga, which is about 45 minutes from where I lived in East Greenbush. It had just stopped raining, and as I took the 270 degree exit ramp from 787 to route 7 at my normal speed if 40mph and began to straighten the wheel, the car started fishtailing. I wasn't paying proper attention and the roads were still really wet, so I must have lost traction. Trying to brake did nothing, and as I spun 180 degrees I watched incredulously as traffic was coming directly at me. About a second later I smashed into the guardrail, myself completely unscathed and with only my rear right blinker knocked out, and the bumper a little dented.

This was incredibly lucky. The cars coming just happened to be too far away for me to have collided with them, so it was a real close shave. I had driven as a pizza guy for almost a year, 6, 8, 12 hours a day and had went on countless roadtrips. Therefore I had total confidence in my driving ability, but all it takes is one slip up like that to bring you back to reality. I got off and the car was fine - I was a shook for a little while and drove very carefully to the tattoo place and back home later. The fun part was getting the lights replaced (much thanks to my step-brother for helping me, no garages would have been open on a Sunday) and wrapping the corner up in red tape to make it look a little better. Not perfect, but better.

The next morning I was driving down the Jersey turnpike and all was well. There were no hitches in the trip and it was a time to remember. Car accidents however are a very real danger that I don't regret leaving behind. While train accidents do happen, they are not nearly as frequent - and it wouldn't even be my fault! And yet, I still somehow miss owning a car and being able to drive, but not the copious maintenance and insurance payments that accompanied it. Or the danger factor.

I'm off to work. I hope you enjoyed this entry, I've been saving it for a slow day.

Roadtrips, recording sessions, and really ridiculous ragers. [warning: very not-Japan related]

I would like to introduce this blog, as the little warning so succinctly states, as a testament to my friends, my bandmates both current and former, and anyone and everyone who has shared with me in the past a love of hardcore music and shows. My life is approaching some huge changes, and although I'm already making premature plans for starting some projects in Tokyo with my friend Ian, nothing will ever be the same as New York. So, from a guy who has been going to shows since he was 14, ran and indexed a website with pictures of local bands for 4 years, and has quite literally felt his life heavily impacted and changed by hardcore music and the people involved with it, this is my current story and a nostalgic gander of appreciation to the past, with a tinge of blind hope for the future.

Roadtrips-

Some of the best and worst times of my life have been roadtrips. The roadtrip is by nature an unpredictable animal. If you really think about it, you're flying down 100s of miles of pavement in a metal box with several other bio-organisms like yourself, all equally succeptible to injury or fatallity at the hand of an irresponsible driver, whether he's in your car or not. But then again, risk is one of those things that just makes life exciting, now isn't it?

Traveling to Hellfest 2002 in Syracuse, my first real roadtrip with John Torn (an enigmatic character whose personality may only be described as indubitable) to Glens falls in his "spaceship" van in 2001 to see Locked in a Vacancy if I remember rightly, and all the trips in between from Pennsylvania to Virginia Beach to Rhode island have been memorable experiences for me. The worse ones include people falling asleep due to heavy ingestion of White Castle at 1pm before leaving New Jersey, and the fact that we would have all died several times had I not be forcefully holding my eyelids open as the others slept in the back, and the driver almost slept at the wheel.

The roadtrip I took yesterday is one I personally hope to never forget, as it was with a unique group of individuals whom I've had the privilige of writing music with over the last 7 months. Former band members of a previous project I was involved in called Save Yourself include Chris and the aforementioned JT are both creative individuals, the former being the best bass player I've ever got to write with, the latter a maniacal lyricist who actually believes in passion and genuineness of his verse, a rare quality nowadays. Our drummer Josh I've known for many years although not nearly as well as I should have, he has much like myself truly come into his own writing style and "leveled up" quite well over the years. Finally Dave, who unfortunately couldn't play on the record due to a pinched nerve (a guitarists worst enemy next to carpel tunnel and tendinitis) was good enough to come along anyway, and I'm certainly glad he did.

If you don't already know, I've played guitar for almost 10 years, self-taught, not a by-the-books musician by any means. I love my ESP LTD and my 5150 head w/ mesa boogie speaker cabinet almost as much as life itself.

Our trip was to Brookline, just outside of Boston, Massachussettes, where former guitarist of One King Down (A straight edge/animal liberation-themed hardcore band of the late '90s from Albany) Mike Scoville, a talented individual and man I greatly admire, was kind enough to produce our demo for one of his classes in Sound Engineering, and for lack of a better word, it ruled.


Recording sessions-

I've recorded 4 times before in my life, and it's always an experience full of mixed affect: love, hate, frustration, relief, over-analysis, and ear-strain. We arrived at 3pm, and after about 2 hours of setting up drum mics (if you've never been in a studio before, that's incredibly fast for setting up mics,) something like 18 including 5 aerial microphones which greatly excited me, we began to lay down drum, guitar and bass tracks. We pushed on far into the night around 12:45 before we actually left for home, and I can't stress enough the saint-like patience of individuals who gruellingly review the same 3 seconds of music dozens of times or with dozens of takes to "punch in" a proper take of a musical track. It's no easy task and one I don't think I could ever do myself.

After many, many takes and corrections we actually hammered out all 6 songs we wrote, plus one super-secret cover song, and even though we're going back in a month to finish lead guitars, vocals and mixing, we definitely accomplished an impressive amount.

Really ridiculous ragers-

Rager: (As defined by me) The expression or outlet of volatile emotional discharge through a creative process that may include singing, screaming, playing an instrument, or many various physical and mental activities. The result leaves you feeling cleansed of repressed emotions, devoid of previous overwhelming frustration, and altogether better than before the rager.

This process of raging is how I'd like to define all the music I've ever written, but especially this last project, possibly my last New York-based band for a long time. We had so much fun writing and hanging out together, that it almost feels a shame to stop now. But, with Josh moving to Oregon in 2 weeks, and me moving in 5, it's time to say goodbye to the NY music scene, which is basically the same as saying goodbye to family and friends. I've made so many great friends along this wild ride. It was in hardcore music I found people I could finally relate to, words that meant something to me, and inspiration to stop taking life as it came and start changing thigns for the better. Every single person who has been involved with me in music project, and every single friend who I've even only ever seen at shows, have all impacted and inspired me with their individuality and desire to just be themselves, and not conform to what is easily accepted, normal or expected. And so with this post I begin the end of my "music career" in New York, although past projects have had rather underwhelming results it has all meant the world to me, and been some of the most fun that I have ever had.


Some info and links:

My current band: Damnation Alley (free downloadable demo coming in August)

Previous band that was my favorite: Save Yourself (R.I.P., and Josh Turner start a new band already, please)