Life and Death of an American

My friend Ryan Pogue came over this week and helped me setup some drums for tracking in the new studio.

The next step is for Zech to come over so we can start figuring out how to get the best drums sounds.

My goal is that I'd be able to start recording local bands by the end of the summer. I'm already talking to Ronnie Fauss about him recording his next EP up at the house.

I play in h...n with Nathan and he's got quite the beard these days.

Tomorrow evening the party will be bumping at the house. You are, of course, invited.

I'm going to be projecting music videos on the walls for fun. Here's the playlist thus far:

50 Cent – In Da Club
Alex Gaudino - Destination Calabria
All American Rejects - Gives You Hell
Annie – I know ur girlfriend hates me
Avril Lavigne - Im with you
Bat For Lashes - Daniel
Black Eyed Peas - Don't Lie
Bright Eyes - First Day Of My Life
Britney Spears - Toxic
BTS - Kid Cudi - Day N Nite
Busta Rhymes - Money
Carpark North - Human
Coldplay Viva Ia Vida
Daft Punk vs Adam Freeland - Aer - Obama
Danko Jones - King Of Magazines
De Staat - The Fantastic Journey The Underground Man
Death Cab for Cuties - Grapevine Fires
Depeche Mode - Wrong
Eric Prydz - CalI On Me
Franz Ferdinand No you girls
Galactic ft. Boots Riley - Hustle Up
Girls Aloud – the promise
Gorillaz - Feel Good
Guns N Roses - Sweet child o’mine
Headless Heroes -Just Like Honey
Jim Noir - AIl Right
Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back
Kanye West - Heartless
Kanye West Love Lockdown
Katsue - A Pickled Sunday
Katy Perry - Kissed a girl
Katy Perry - Hot n cold
Kings of Leon - Sex on fire
Kings of Leon - use somebody
Lady Gaga - Just Dance
Lady Sovereign - so human
Lily Allen - Not fair
Lily Allen - Smile
Lily Allen - The Fear
Metronomy - A Thing for Me
Mogwai - Final Master
Nasa - Hip Hop
Noisettes - dont upset the rhythm
Pendulum - Showdown
Peter Fox - Schwarz Zu Blau
Pink - So What
Pnau - Baby
Rex the Dog - Bubblicious
Rhianna - Dont stop the music
Rihanna - Disturbia
Rihanna - Umbrella
Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches
Royksopp - Happy Up Here
Sportsday Megaphone - Meet Me In The Middle
Stygg - Iunacy
Temposhark - Blame
The Rogue Element - Escalation
The Saturdays-Just Cant Get Enough
Thinskin - Strip Me Down

It is far from complete (as several folks have been sending me their list of requests)

Today we drove to Grandview (south of Ft Worth) for an amazing lunch at Burgundy Boucherie.

This is Brook and Mark. They are are neighbors. We only lived in the house for 5 years before we met and got to know them. To be fair they've only lived there for 2 or 3 years.

They're expecting their first child in a month or so... so Brook is about to pop.

Last night we were in major straighten up mode at the house. We've lived there for 5 years or so but we still have stuff we haven't really gone through. Most of it is in one of our 3 bedrooms.

We each took one of the bedrooms last night and started going through stuff. For me this means throwing a lot of stuff away. I'm an IT guy and a musician plus I've got some packrat tendencies: old computer parts + band gear + random photos of people whose name I can't remember from college. All of this unchecked can turn a 3 bedroom house into a 1 bedroom flat.

So my strategy is simple:

• If I haven't touched the computer hardware in a year then it goes in the trash.
• If the music gear is broken and unused it goes in the trash.
• If the paper or book hasn't been read in several years an I have no plan to read it in the next 6 months it goes in the trash half-priced books stack.

It is a pretty effective strategy. In 15 minutes I had several bags to be taken to our county issued trash can. After about an hour That can was full.

In spite of this I still ended up with a pile of computer equipment I thought I might use at some point. I decided to create a reverse time capsule - I placed the odd assortment of cables and adapters into a spare box, taped it shut, and wrote "DO NOT OPEN UNLESS IT'S AN EMERGENCY. THROW AWAY ON MAY 25, 2009." I put the box on the closet shelf and set a google reminder for next May.

I figure that if I haven't used any of that stuff in 6 months then it's not critical enough to take up any more space in my house and should be tossed.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Twitter has sort of filled my "random thought that I need the Internet to read!" void. And because of it's forced brevity it encourages lots of succinct posts.

That being said I don't really journal (live or otherwise) these days but I imagine it would probably be healthy to do that. Of course LJ feels pretty theropeutic in its setup (as opposed to blogs that are topical in nature). So maybe I'll use it as an outlet for emotional hygiene...

If I do I'll probably go private so I don't get dooced for venting about my job.

Btw - This took me 20 minutes to type from my iPhone. That's too long I be practical.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

So will I actually blog more since I can do it on my phone?

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Our house got broken into yesterday afternoon while Lara was home sick. Young latino guy knocked on the front door but because lara was in her PJs she didn’t answer. She went back to our room to change and when she walked into the kitchen the dude was crawling through our kitchen window.

He saw her and fled. She saw him and immediately closed the window and called 911. The cops arrived very quickly and she called me so I sped home from work.

Everything else happened like you’d probably imagine – new window locks, home security installation happens Monday afternoon and of course now I hate young latino guys who crawl through windows ;)

My band has spent part of this week working with itunes legal to try to find out how someone else got an illegal copy of our latest EP onto itunes. if you search for "farstar" on itunes you will see 2 versions of Back to Life EP.

The only one for which we receive any compensation is the one listed as "iTunes Plus".




If you have purchased our album on iTunes please contact them directly through their website and indicate that you want us to get actually paid for the music that is ours - http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/

NOTE: the Farstar record listed as iTunes Plus costs the same except the download is 100% DRM free!