Robert Smith

That earlier post really got me thinking about music and the way it has defined my life for so many years. Of course, I rarely think of anything else. If it were possible for it to be a religion, it would be for me. I remember reading something several years about one of my favorite guitarists. He was described as one of those music fans who would sneak a transistor radio into bed with him at night as a child so he could listen to am radio all night long. And then he never outgrew the practice as he got older. I used to always sneak my walkman to bed to listen to cassettes or radio all night and when I read that I remember hoping I would never outgrow it. I haven't. Many nights it is hard for me to fall asleep unless I'm listening to something on my ipod. It's funny.

Anyway, as I've said before, my music tastes are all over the board. I primarily listen to stuff that accompanies the whole scooter scene, but I'm not governed by it to the point of excluding other things I really love. When I was a kid the first band I ever heard that I liked just for me was Oingo Boingo. They were great. I grew up in a tiny little rural Utah town and the first time I heard Oingo Boingo they sounded like they were from Mars. For the first time I realized that not only was there music out there other than oldies, country and the top 40, but I liked the other stuff better than the stuff all the kids at school were listening to. I can't understate the impact Oingo Boingo had on my young life. It was a complete revelation to me. Now you you have to keep in mind, growing up in my town in the 80's, if you did anything outside the norm everyone in town thought you had to be homosexual, a devil worshipper, on drugs or any combo of the three. In reality, it really just meant you liked R.E.M. Unfortunately you'd get beat up for liking R.E.M. because as I said it meant you were a gay junkie devil worshipper. I mean it was obvious. If you play Radio Free Europe backwards it says "Hey everybody, I'm a gay junkie devil worshipper so beat me up okay. Thanks."

Anyway. I digress. After Oingo Boingo I started listening to anything "new" I could hear. I got into groups like the Violent Femmes and The Dead Milkmen. There was a very brief (and very embarrassing) time when I would have told you Erasure was my favorite band. Shortly after this, I heard a band that took my obsession with rock-as-art-as-life to a new level. I heard The Cure.

This was the first time that my "favorite band" became more than just the band that I had more albums of than any other band. This was when I really understood the concept that rock stars could easily double as prophets. The songs, the look, the life. All of it made sense. All of it felt like it belonged to me alone.



When I was a junior in high school I saw my cousin Theresa who I hadn't seen in many years. The day we "met" I was wearing my Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me t-shirt. Come to find out my cousin is also a big Cure fan. She once sent me a big envelope of photos of Robert Smith that she had cut out of some books. Of course I put them all on my wall. (You can imagine my parents concern that I was hanging photos of androgynous men on my wall.) That same year I started keeping a journal. I remember so many nights when I'd write in it until the early hours of the morning. I'd listen to the Cure albums Faith, Seventeen Seconds or Pornography over and over and over and over. Looking back on it now it makes me laugh because c'mon, give me a break. How ridiculous is that? Pouring my poetic soul into my own books in the still of the night while listening to The Cure. If I did that now I'd mock myself endlessly for being so emo. But I did it. I have the books to prove it.

It's a very good thing that I found The Cure. The first day I ever hung out with Amanda she started talking about how much she liked the band. I asked her if she had ever heard the session they did with John Peel. She hadn't. I have the session on vinyl and invited her over to hear it. She also hadn't heard the Quadpus ep. So anyway, she came over the next day at 4. She brought a cup of tea. We listened to The Cure and a bunch of other stuff and you pretty much know how the story ends.

pop music

I just learned about this video on the forums over at Macidol.



I love it. It's so simple and catchy and much less pretentious than Led Zeppelin's original version. All due respect to Zeppelin, but sometimes this sugary pop stuff is just what the doctor ordered.

Watching this got me thinking about how much I love power pop. It's simple really. It's all the energy and independence of punk rock without the politics and anger. It's as if The Sex Pistols were fronted by Buddy Holly.

There's so much incredible music out there that just goes undiscovered.

Like this one by Adorable.



It's hard to get a better shoegazer song than this. I mean listen to it. It's got the great pop lyrics, simple melody and wall of blurry guitars. It's brilliant. This is a genre that never really got it's due in the states. I blame Nirvana and that whole Seattle thing that happened in the early 90's. There were all these great bands coming out all over the place that had this incredible neo-psychedelia to them and they were drowned in a sea of flannel.

Take this one by The Pale Saints



It's simple and epic all at once. I remember the first time I heard it. I was with my friends driving to a Cure concert in 1992. It came on the radio and it just stopped me. This song still just does something to me. We stopped at the first record store we saw (which was probably a Pegasus records) and I bought the album.

Of course there are the masters of this blurry sound, The Jesus and Mary Chain.



These guys were from Scotland and there was another band from Scotland that was a huge deal to me. The Trashcan Sinatras.



This is one of the most lighthearted-relaxed-in-a-good-way songs I've ever heard. Granted, it's little more than wuss rock. The video is absolutley laughable now. Why are they in the rain? But let me tell you, if you were a kid into good music just for the sake of it being good music, when the Sinatras came out in 1990 you knew who they were. They were heir apparent to The Smiths, but of course they fizzled in the wake of grunge. Their third album wasn't even released in the states. It was a real shame. Another band that seemed posed to take the place of the Smiths stateside was James.



This is the first thing I ever heard by them. Their style of pop music mixed with lyrics that dealt largely with the singers struggles to come to some kind of reconciliation with god really mattered to me. It was easy for me to relate to the songs and I found a certain solace in that. I always did though. I always found things in music that I didn't find elsewhere. I suppose that is why music has always been such a big part of my life.

And lastly, how can I talk about the music of this time and not put this one on here. It's timeless. Lee Mavers is a genius. Have you heard this entire album? It's incredible. No two ways about it.

Boise

Amanda and I spent Christmas in Boise with family. It was a blast. This was easily one of the best holidays ever.

On Christmas eve I took some photos of Amanda's sister Maria, her husband Mike and their son Hayden. We walked around downtown Boise and shot pictures in alleys. It's a bit of a cliche, but I always enjoy doing that. This is Hayden in an alley near the Pioneer Building. This is about as tough as a toddler can look.



I also shot this photo of Amanda. She has the most incredible eyes.

Bare Christmas

for the second christsmas in a row now we have not put up our tree, no stockings, wait last year i might have tacked them on the wall above our tv, no lights. at the begining of december we put it off for a while ( our tree is in storage) then as soon as we know it its 7 days befor december 25th and it just kinda looks bla. we even have a mantle this year for stockings!! wow , we are really lazy, busy, not in the spirit of the holiday... i dont know. but tonight i am sad over it. we had our christmas party at work tonight and one of my students let me borrow A Christmas Story. i thought i would surprise jeremy because we were at costco the other day and he was looking for it. he got very excited. it was cute. and just think about how much fun it would have been if we could have watched it with our christmas tree lights on, a fire going with stockings hung and eating the cookies i made for the party that nobody ate.im sad. i guess when we go home to boise on sunday we will have our tree and everything else there.

Tilt

These are my old friends Tilt and Mandy. This photo has got to be 10 years old, or more. Tilt and I were roommates for a couple of years and we had a lot of fun going to ska shows, eating at Denny's and being broke all the time. Anyway, tonight Amanda had to go to a work meeting tonight and I started messing around in GarageBand and wrote a song that I'm dedicating to Tilt.

You can hear the song at

http://macidol.com/song/21056

There's also a bit more info there about the song. Good times!

The Vandellas

I NEVER get sick of this song. I'm sure Amanda does, but not me. It gets me every time. Honestly, how can you sit still to this? The Supremes had nothing on The Vandellas. Nothing.

apt

This is our apartment. It's a little on the small side, but I really like it.

email

This is what it looks like when Amanda checks her email. Cute, huh?

Good news all around

This is my friend Chris. He's the frontman for the punk band The Willkills. I was in the band for a little while and got to play on their first album. I have to say, I think it's a really good record. Anyway, today I learned it made the top 5 albums of 2007 in SLUG magazine. Granted, it's not a big magazine, but still that's pretty cool.

Furthermore, I recently learned that one of my home recordings is going to be used in the soundtrack of an upcoming independent documentary called Killer at Large. The filmmakers emailed me today and I'm going to get $500 for the song. I'm really excited about it. It's funny to me that one day I recorded a song while Amanda was at work because I had nothing better to do and now it's going to be in film and I'm being paid for it. If only I could come up with a way to make money off everything I do when I'm bored. If someone would pay me to play my Star Wars video game or watch Family Guy reruns I'd be pretty wealthy by now.

Here's a link to the song that is going to be in the movie in case you'd like to hear it. (copy and paste)

http://macidol.com/song/18835

Staff mugs

Today I was shooting mug shots of the photo staff for upcoming credential stuff. These are three of my favorites.

If I'm ever in Japan...

...these guys seem like they'd be fun to hang out with.

1964

This is a picture I drew almost ten years ago. I used to draw a lot. Not so much anymore. It was a great creative outlet, but now I just do other stuff I guess. I use a cropped down portion of this drawing on my MacIdol page. That's the site where I put all my music. Anyway, tonight I finished a new pop song I've been working on called 1964. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. You can listen to it by doing a copy/paste with this link. (I'd hotlink it, but I don't know how.)

http://macidol.com/song/20962

Holi

This is a photo I took of myself in 2006 at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, during Holi, or the Color Festival. The festival symbolizes the coming of spring and the vanquishing of evil. It's a lot of fun. It took me several hours to clean my camera after the event.

Awesome video

The scooter rally is coming up in a few months. I can hardly wait. I didn't get to go last year because of work and it sucked. I watch a video like this one and I can already see myself out on the dance floor at one of the all-nighters. It's almost more than I can bear. Amanda got this great Fred Perry skirt to wear when we go. She's going to look absolutely adorable.

French pop

My music tastes are all over the board. I'm not sure how it happened but this week I really got into female French pop music from the 1960's. I found a couple of awesome albums on iTunes. The strangest thing happened though, I found this artist today named France Gall. Her stuff is really really cool. She has this song called Laisse tomber les filles. It's a great song. Anyway, last weekend I saw Tarantino's Death Proof and there is a song on that soundtrack called Chick Habit by April March. I really liked the song so I bought the soundtrack pretty much for that one tune. (Well that and the Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich song.) Then today, I find the France Gall song and it's the same exact song, just sung in French and from the '60's. Funny. So naturally, I had to buy that one too. The french one is better.

2uce

I met 2uce Betta today when he stopped by the office to be interviewed. He was just named one of the best undiscovered rappers in the country by Vibe magazine. He's only twenty years old. That's pretty cool if you ask me. All the other shooters were super busy today so I got to shoot this portrait.

Peel

Im teaching again at an esthetics school. Some of my co- instructors got thier hands on a "physician only" tca peel. really if you look hard enough you can find these peels on the internet, however most of the time they are not quality grade and people who dont know what they are doing should not be using them. Anyways, I had them do a 20% tca on me. for those of you who dont understand the world of esthetics, that means major down time , hamburger face, lots of peeling. I needed it really bad though. I am not willing to post a real picture of my face. Use your imagination. Mom.. you would like a hamburger face wouldnt you?!!

The Velvelettes

If you ever want to hear some great soul music pick up a copy of this cd. I bought it a few years back and listen to it so much it must drive Amanda crazy. There is a track on here called "The Boy From Crosstown". It's incredible. Easily rivals anything The Vandellas ever did.

DA-A-ANCE

Click on the question mark. I love this song. The band is called The Lambrettas. Gotta love a band named after a scooter. Actually it's kind of lame that they're named after a scooter, but that doesn't mean that the song isn't good, right? I love their suits. They are Merc suits. In my humble opinion Merc makes the coolest suits in the world. I bought one to get married in. That was the best day of my life, but not so much because of the suit.

P125-X

This is me on my scooter at Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon. It's a 1979 Vespa P-125X. It's got a Pollini kit, a bunch of performance parts and is all jetted out. It's a really fast scooter. I want to put a new exhaust/carb on it which will make it even faster. One of the greatest adrenaline rushes of my life was when I was going 65mph at the end of a very long ride on a very hot summer day. The engine heat seized and I went from 65 to 0 in about 20 feet. I have no idea how I stayed on the scooter (or how many nasty words I used as I skid to a stop.) Luckily, it wasn't a hard seize and I was able to start right back up and ride home. I had a hard seize once which sucks more than I could ever explain. It's difficult to explain why I'm so into old scooters. To me it's all about soul music, reggae and British clothing. If you understand that, you probably have a decent scooter of your own. None of this Kymco crap.

Hummingbird

This is a picture of a hummingbird that jeremy shot at canyonlands. i love this picture and jeremy thinks he can do better. this is the first time he has let me do anything with the picture. isnt it a beautiful picture!! i told him if he doesnt like it he needs to shoot somthing better so i can have it up somewhere... get on it jeremy!!!!!

Jeremy at the office

This is us on a trip to Canyonlands to be with Jeremy's parents last Mother's Day.

Grapes

Under normal circumstances, when I react negatively to others Amanda gets mad at me. Like the other day when we were at Village Inn and I saw a waiter drop the ice scoop on the ground and then kick it and then pick it up and use it to scoop ice into a glass I was apalled and I wanted to say something. Amanda knew I was going to mouth off to the guy and begged me not to. She hates it when I make a scene. I can't blame her. I'm pretty good at it. Anyway, she calmed me down a bit and I didn't say anything to the waiter as he walked by. I just gave him really dirty looks. The waiter walked over to a table with the glasses of water and gave them to two little old ladies. No crap. Little old ladies. Then I knew I had to say something. When our waitress brought our food to our table, she caught us right in the middle of a quiet disagreement about what course of action I should take. The waitress asked if anything was wrong. I told her there was in fact something wrong and then recounted what I had seen. The old ladies drinks were replaced. The ice scoop was replaced. The waiter was chastised. The crappy part is, I was chastised too. Amanda doesn't like it when my confrontational side comes out. I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be, but at the restaurant that day, I couldn't play nice. Have you ever seen the floors at a Village Inn? They're pretty disgusting. Not to mention the other places that waiter had likely walked before he picked the scoop up off the floor and used to serve icy poo water to some unsuspecting grandmothers.
Anyway, last night I was walking through the kitchen and saw some grapes Amanda got at the store. I got a little smile on my face as I realized how perfect a grape would be at that exact moment. As I picked one off the little vine and walked into the living room and out onto the front porch, Amanda asked what I was doing with the grape. I didn't have time to answer her. I had to throw the grape. It was a perfect shot. It hit our neighbors window and made a really loud "bong" sound. The neighbor looked out the window and saw me standing on my porch, waving to her. She turned the music down. She had been playing it so loudly I could hear it when I was in our basement doing laundry. After about 40 minutes I couldn't take it anymore.
Amanda, who usually hates it when I'm confrontational said this time it was okay because the music was so lame. Seriously. Who still listens to Verve? Give me a break. Best use of a grape ever.

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