Road Gig!

Tonight my band plays its first road gig. Whenever I think of playing out of DC, I always think of this Tenacious D episode. We are playing at the Brass Monkey Saloon, and here is the information. We are going on late, like 12:30 or so.

I learned in my last band that I should always wear earplugs. They are mostly great, but I have noticed a recent problem. We have been practicing a fair amount, and thus I have been wearing earplugs a fair amount. The problem is that they are messing with my earwax. Currently my right ear feels slightly blocked. It will eventually go away, but it is irritating none the less.

History...

One of the problems with the Nationals is their lack of history. Actually, more to the point, the problem is that we don't know which history we want to adopt. When the team moved to Washington, there were discussions about which records we would celebrate and hold on to. Which Senator's records would we use, the ones that became the Rangers or the Twins or both? And what about the Expo's records? It is confusing.

That is why I see the Nationals as starting a new history, which is one of the things that makes the team exciting. Also, that would be the one benefit of a historically bad season. It would give the team character, and something to talk about years down the road. We could all say, "I was there when."

In many ways I envy a team like the Philadelphia Phillies. They have a long and storied history, and their fans should be proud of it. For example, this site is fantastic. I am seriously thinking about trying to make it up to Philly for the Phillies unprecedented 10,000 loss. Think how exciting that would be. No other professional sports franchise, in any sport mind you, has ever lost 10,000 games. Just the thought of the Phillies losing 10,000 games makes me giddy.

So congratulations Philadelphia! I should also mention that Philly is the city with 4 professional sports teams that has gone the longest without a championship. Truly you are the losingest losers to ever lose.

Thank You...

I intended to write this yesterday, but stupid work got in the way. Also, I was hella tired. Anyway, I want to thank everyone for coming out to see our debut on Wednesday. It went a lot better than I could have expected, although I am not the most optimistic person in the world so take that with a grain of salt.

I also want to thank everyone who linked to us. It was really unexpected. Personally, I was going to wait until we had played a few concerts before I demanded links. In fact, the bandwidth for our album was all used up and Tommy had to come up with some new hosting. I like to think of it as having been Yglesiased.

For a little behind the scenes information. I usually sing on more songs, but Aaron plugged in a short guitar chord, and I couldn't both play the guitar and sing at the same time. That is something we are going to have to work on. Also, the last song was so long because that is what a starting band does when they don't have enough material to fill out a set list. I hope to shorten it in the future.

Thanks to Tommy for the picture.

Living on the Lighted Stage

I hate Rush. A lot. One reason that I hate Rush is that Neil Peart's drum solos are so long and useless that bassist/keyboardist/irritating vocalist Geddy Lee uses them as an opportunity to check on his fantasy baseball stats. Seriously.

Tonight...

Just a friendly reminder, but tonight is my band's first concert at the Velvet Lounge. We are playing with Tenley from American University. We should be going on around 9:00 and I think that tickets are $6.00. This could all be completely wrong; I am always wary of trusting information given to me by Aaron. You all should come out. Yes You! I have also put a new version of Cultured Capital with real drums up on our blog.

What I find shocking is that all of sudden my band is playing a lot of concerts. We have seven concerts in the next 2 months. I went from not being in a band at all to being in a very busy band awfully quick.

For my friends who have never known anyone in a band before, this means that you are going to hear a lot of whining from me. You can ask Tommy, who has been to the Grog and Tankard more times then any man not convicted of a crime should. Trust me, I feel bad about begging people to come to concerts, but this is life in a band.

The truth is that it is important that some of our concerts are well attended, and others, ahem, can fall by the wayside. To that end, I promise only to bug you all when it is important. While I would love for you all to come to every concert, I am much more realistic.

Comin' to Liberate You

Just so you all know, if I ever get the chance to stand on the same stage as Bruce Springsteen while he was playing "Rosalita" I would look exactly like Craig Finn from the Hold Steady in this video.

Assuming that I didn't pass out first.

Of course, this is the definitive live "Rosalita" live performance. I dare anyone to watch that and tell me that Bruce is not a genuine rock god. If I can have just one song from my concert on April 11th end like this one does, then this whole learning to play the guitar thing will be totally worth it.

New Music...

I am not sure if our drummer, Spencer, wanted to re-record some of the drums on the new album because he wanted the music to reflect us as a band more, or because he hated my fake drumming, but on Wednesday we went to his house and recorded some real drum parts. We have the first new song, Strike Up The Band, up over at The City Veins' blog. You should go over and have a listen.

In other news, I installed this plugin and so far I think it works great. If you are thinking about hosting music on your Wordpress blog, you should definitely check it out.

Ominous Signs at RFK...

And I am not referring to the score.

Opening day was good. The Nats lost, but if that surprised you then you are in for a long season. What is funny is that the team, or at least the ownership, know how bad things could get for this team. For example:

When I arrived at my seat, there was a video preview of the new stadium, including descriptions of various luxury boxes and seating arrangements. This was combined with the graphics of construction girders that adorned all of the images on the scoreboard. The announcer welcomed us to the last opening day at RFK stadium. Not one pitch had been thrown yet, and we were already encouraged to look forward to next year.

The guess the year trivia question was, "In what year did 'Major League' come out?" I am going to let the IMDB plot description speak for itself:

"The new owner of the Cleveland Indians puts together a purposely horrible team so they'll lose and she can move the team."

Hmm....

Finally, the slogan for this season is "Pledge Your Allegiance." One will earn their fan stripes every time they show up at the ballpark this year.

Actually, I don't think the season will be all that bad this year. Expectations have been lowered to the point where this team can, and probably will, trip over them.