I don’t want you to feel sorry for me at all because I am working today. It comes with the territory I suppose and in the end I will actually gain something after sitting in my cubicle for 8 hours…2 days off in December. I am ok with that.
The one thing about today that differs from the other days I am here is that it is not that busy. People are being safe today or just waiting until tomorrow to call in for assistance. Anyways, slow days mean I get to use the iPod. That keeps me entertained.
A couple of songs popped up that reminded me of my past throughout my shift. I guess you could say they are jems from my past. Has anyone heard of any of these? If so what do you think?
“Just Another Victim” – Helmet & House Of Pain (Judgement Night Soundtrack) I loved this soundtrack when I was a teenager. The movie was ok but the soundtrack was just awesome mixing up rock with rap. Who would have thought this CD could have started such a trend? House of Pain AND Helmet? Awesome.
“Not The Same” – Dinosaur Jr. I was always a huge fan of Dinosaur Jr. except the time I saw them live. Worst show ever.
“You Make It Easy” – Air I remember I picked up Moon Safari at World Music in Columbus when I was CD shopping alone. I was looking for something new and different from all the metal and punk I was involved in. I sampled this French band called Air and have been a fan of their work ever since.
“Where It’s At” – Beck Whoever does not like this song in some way or sort has issues. I only wish Beck would record material like this again.
“(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” – Minor Threat In my opinion they are one of the best punk bands out there to this day. Even if I was not stright edge when I listened to them in the past I respected them and wished I could have seen them live just once.
“Tonight, Tonight” – Smashing Pumpkins
Still one of my fav Smashing Pumpkins tracks ever. The video alone blew me away when it was over played on MTV. I guess I liked the classic style that was portayed. I also liked Billy’s top hat.
Well that is all I have for now. I should get back to work…as if there is any…
So I am a little late on this post… I have been so busy with work and just life in general and have not had a moment to sit down until this now.
A couple Saturday’s back I was invited to check out Filter at Cleveland’s Hard Rock Café thanks to Big Machine Media. Little did I know, I was invited to a more intimate setting with proceeds being donated to the Cleveland Food Bank. It was also the world famous rock n’ roll restaurant’s ten year anniversary since it first opened it’s doors in Cleveland.
Just a quick note and tip for that matter… If you want a free Rolex, all you need to do is work at the Hard Rock Café for ten years. It’s no joke; a bunch of hard working employees were recognized for their decade of service before the show with an expensive timepiece. Just before the show started, a handful of dedicated workers at the Hard Rock Café were all presented with a fancy Rolex. It was nice to see such an award/thank you handed out, but who am I kidding…on with the show!!!
With the venue usually operating as a restaurant, it was no surprise that there was not much room for people to gather around the stage. Meeting up with Matt from AddictedToVinyl.com, we chose to stand our ground by the stage with our backs to the security gate that protected the large soundboard. Not the best place to be standing for picture taking, but I did my best to capture the evening.
Electric Touch
Opening act Electric Touch from Austin, TX hit the stage for a set that I really was wishing could have been sped up. The rock act, reminding me of all sorts of acts from the Strokes to the Rolling Stones (the lead singer looked like Elijah Wood with Mick Jagger like moves), blew through their songs with high energy but really did not do much for myself or the rest of the crowd for that matter. Even if the lead signer had an English accent and two of the musicians were twins, their pop rock sound did not sit well with many who anticipated Filter. I am sure this will not the the last time I hear about Electric Touch though, with their self titled Electric Touch hitting shelves over the summer the poppy rock act should be gaining some attention…just not mine.
Richard Patrick
Cleveland’s Filter took to the stage that very well may have been the smallest stage they have ever performed on. That was the least of the industrial/hard rock’s worries though as they delivered an amazing performance to the very lucky crowd opening with “Welcome To The Fold” off of the band’s second release Title of Record. The current line-up all looked great and appeared to be having a great time. Lead signer Richard Patrick was full of smiles and energy that really lead the band through the eleven song set.
My highlight of the evening was when the band broke into “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do”, a song that was actually created by Filter and electronic music duo The Crystal Method found on Spawn: The Album (1997 Film). I immediately sang along from start to finish is it is one of my favorite tracks by Filter. It sounded amazing live.
Filter
It was fun to people watch while the band continued to play. There were lots of fans there who clearly have been fans of Filter during their 13 year career. Having grown up, well most of them, some even brought their kids to the show. At one time Richard Patrick stopped in between songs to ask how old a certain young fan was. She let everyone know via microphone she was only nine years old.
The band continued through their set and performed “Hey Man, Nice Shot” the bands first commercial hit. Everyone sang along to the track pumping their fists in the air. It was indeed a very interactive evening. After the song ended the band left the stage with all, if not every, fan begging for more.
With a brief pause the band returned to the stage for their adoring fans and broke into “The Take” off the band’s 2008 release Anthems for the Damned. From there the band played “Take A Picture”, one of their other mainstream hits. After the last note was struck and the mic was put down, the band gave out sincere thank yous to everyone in the house. With a quick bow and many handshakes and hi-fives the band exited and called it a night.
I admit this was the first time seeing the band live. For some reason I thought I saw Filter live back in the day at a festival in the 90’s but apparently I was wrong (sorry Matt, I have no idea who I was thinking of) I found out after the show by rifling through my huge stack of ticket stubs and then went so far as to research the number of times Filter played Cleveland.
It was a great experience. Minus a couple of folk who clearly had too many pre-game drinks, most of the fans were really excited to be there and, like myself, really enjoyed their Saturday evening. After the show staff from FYE were selling the band’s latest release Anthems for the Damned for twelve bucks.
What I didn’t know was that if you bought a CD, the band would sign it for you. I picked up copy as I had not heard the politically charged album yet and needed something to listen to on the drive home. After making my purchase I was handed the CD and given a wristband and pointed where to stand in line if I wanted my CD signed. Since I was the only person standing there I decided to start the line and get the CD signed. After I chatted with the band briefly I turned around to make way to the parking deck and discovered that the line had grown quite large. Good timing on my part.
Thanks to my music loving guru Matt, who spoke about the show as well on his site AddictedToVinyl.com, I was able to score the entire set list:
Welcome To The Fold
American Cliche
Dose
(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do
It’s Gonna Kill Me
So I Quit
Jurassitol
Cancer
Hey Man Nice Shot
One of the cool things about having a blog site is just the total randomness. I posted a blog a couple weeks ago about post-hardcore now defunct band Stompbox in my new Times Of Yore posts.
Apparently one of the former band members happened to come across my post and shot me an email asking if I wanted some elaboration on what really happened. The band member was Patrick, the former bassist of Stompbox.
Well of course I did. So I interviewed him…
I sent him back an email asking what really happened to the band and what he and the rest of the band members were up to these days. Here are his responses collectively as I’ve mixed up the few emails we exchanged and categorized them with Patrick’s approval of course.
Stompbox Flyer - Vintage!!!
The reason Stompbox called it quits, what happened to the lead singer Erich, and what direction did the band members took:
The reason Erich left the band is that we asked him to. There are/were rumors flying around that drugs had a lot to do with our breakup, but that’s all blown way out of proportion. Sure, Erich was doing drugs, (as were most of the rest of us) but it didn’t bother any of us much. Erich was (and still is) kind of a dick. By “kind of a dick” I mean a real a–hole. In addition to that, he was… …uh, let’s just say he was an inconsistent singer. When he was on, he was great, but a lot of times he was off. Way off. There’s some live recordings that Jeff has that are just brutal. Also, we had some very fundamental differences in what we wanted to do musically.
Erich was in favor (and in hindsight, he was probably right) of “giving the people what they want”. All the kids that came to our shows really wanted the “big riff” so they could get sick in the pit and hurt each other, and (except for the part about hurting each other…we were very “Fugazi” about that and stopped a lot of shows when fights broke out etc…) he (Erich) was perfectly happy with that.
The rest of us wanted to be “artists” and “express ourselves musically”. Again, hindsight (or maybe cynicism) tells me that we were probably foolish.
So, we gave him the boot and changed the name of the band to Slower. We wrote a bunch of new tunes and did a couple more tours. We added a second bass player (Mikey Welch, who later was in Weezer for an album) and I took over vocals. I wish I had some good recordings of that band, but there just isn’t much around. I’ve got some abysmal recordings from a show we did in Seattle, but it was straight off the board, so pretty much all you can hear is the drums and vocals. It’s brutally bad. There’s a tape from a live radio show that I have, but it’s in pretty crappy condition, much of it is all garbled up. Zephan’s ex-girlfriend supposedly has a ton of live Slower video, but they didn’t exactly break up on very good terms. I guess when your boyfriend breaks up with you by telling you he married somebody else, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Go figure. Zephan is a phenomenal drummer, but he’s a bit on the self centered side!
We did one tour billed as Stompbox still, and used that to introduce the “new sound” to people who were into Stompbox. Some people liked it more, some liked in less. (On one of those tours we played with Jesus Lizard at Peabody’s in Cleveland…David Yow drank me under the table and then went out and played their show. I guess he’s got what’s called an “iron constitution”…Ha! I was so tanked I had to pass out in our van after about two Jesus Lizard songs. Good times!)
After those two tours, we just sort of imploded.
Zephan and Mikey Welch [went on to] play with Juliana Hatfield on her attempt at rocking out called “Juliana’s Pony”. Jeff is [currently] the musical director for the Blue Man Group in NYC now.
Jeff and Zeph were also in a band called Milligram for a while. The CD called This is Class War is absolutely amazing if you can find it. [Milligram] had Jonah the singer from Only Living Witness and Darryl from Slapshot/Roadsaw playing guitar. That cd is so good it STILL makes me jealous! You can download the whole Milligram albumThis is Class War for free, which is a pretty sweet deal! That website has that whole album, plus the EP they did AND a bunch of punk rock covers.
I was in another band for a while called Placer. Noisy arty stuff. We did one CD called Summer on Dopamine Records, a teeny indie label out of Boston. You can find the Placer album on iTunes. Even if you don’t want to buy it, you can hear little samples of the songs. I played steel guitar in that band. Oddly enough, when I quit that band, Jeff (guitarist of Stompbox) too over my spot on steel.
If you want to hear what Slower sounded like, Jeff’s got a homemade video up on YouTube. The sound is from a radio show we did, and you get to hear me totally flub the second line of the song. Slower was in many ways the opposite of Stompbox. Stompbox was music that made us laugh with words that were brooding and self indulgent, while Slower was words that made us laugh with music that was self indulgent! Jeff also did a pretty cool video for “Jake Song” with the original demo track we did. It [can be found] on YouTube too.
These days Erich’s living in Los Angeles. I don’t really know what he’s doing for sure, I think he runs sound in clubs.
I had pretty much dropped out of the music biz after Slower dissolved. I decided that maybe it would be fun to find out what it was like to have money to live on. As it turns out, it’s pretty cool!
I live in Toledo now, and am a stay at home dad. In fact, until about a year ago, we were living in Lakewood, not too far from were you are, I guess. I used to go to My Minds Eye a lot. Cool record store. Bent Crayon too. I wasn’t a huge fan of Cleveland in general, but I REALLY liked Lakewood. In fact I kind of miss it, which I didn’t think I would when we moved.
The real story about the departure from the record label:
The deal with Columbia was that our A&R person left and went to Maverick. That left us at Columbia with nobody who really cared much about us, so we were sort of in limbo. Finally, we asked them (Columbia) if they’d let us (Stompbox) go with no strings attached, and they said “Sure!” Mary (the A&R person from Columbia who went to Maverick) wanted us to come over to Maverick with her, but this was all happening at the same time as we were getting ready to kick Erich out of the band. After we booted him, she kind of took it personally and said “Oh, well f— you too” and signed the Deftones. (as it turns out, that was a good move…in fact, I still have to say that they were a pretty cool band. I don’t know if they are STILL a cool band, cause that sort of thing can change over time…)
That MySpace thing is pretty funny. I don’t know who started it, but it’s pretty crazy that so many people even remember us. On the list of Stompbox’s friends, we (the individual former members of the band) are the top four friends. It makes me feel important. (har har)
Videos:
So there you have it. That was a greatly appreciated dose of information from the source itself. Patrick, props to you for offering to tell your side of the story.
As of late my Sirius radio has been stuck on the rock/alternative station Lithium 24. Once in a while I love to just listen to the stuff I rocked out to while a teenager.
Today I checked out the friendly AddictedToVinyl.com and there it was… the perfect mix tape. Apparently I am not the only one who has been thinking about the past. Head on over to his site for a link to download for a sweet 90’s mix. It will not disappoint.
After checking out the mix I starting thinking of things that remind me of the 90’s. Mainly things that helped shape me into what I was becoming…a music lover. Not only did I think of music but also concerts I went to and places I hung out. I also thought about the movies as a youth I saw and then watched over and over again memorizing the lines and the way the people acted.
It took me a couple of years to actually follow the story line and see it was a love story but when I first saw it my jaw dropped at the musicians who played roles in the movie or performed songs. I was young when it came out. All I remember is that I wanted to move to Seattle, buy thermo long johns and a pair of combat boots. I wanted to be like the guys in Singles.
The thought of being a grunged out coffee making Seattle-ite soon changed those as I was introduced to other music and found my click…mainly punk rock. I was growing up you know…change happened a lot. I altered my look more than once in high school and went from a grungy long haired (bright red) to shaving my head senior year wearing NoFX shirts. I might have gone punk rock, but I still listened to the rock/alt.
I still like the 90’s rock and always will… I also like Matt Dillon movies….well mainly There’s Something About Mary…(hey, that was 90’s too!!!)
The Beastie Boys are counting on you to rock the vote this year.
This is the first time the Beasties have even come close touring in Cleveland since 1998. I saw them last year and even got to interview them at the Virgin Mobile Tour. I have to saw they are still awesome. My interview was not much of an interview as much as us just shooting the you know what… I really need to post that on here one day. Their live show was incredible. It was my third time seeing them live.
So now I am trying to figure out if I should go… I have so much going on late October. Decisions decisions… Pre-sale starts tomorrow at 10am. Password is VOTE. Go to their website for more info.
hitting shelves over the summer the poppy rock act should be gaining some attention…just not mine.
. The current line-up all looked great and appeared to be having a great time. Lead signer Richard Patrick was full of smiles and energy that really lead the band through the eleven song set.
. I immediately sang along from start to finish is it is one of my favorite tracks by Filter. It sounded amazing live.
. From there the band played “Take A Picture”, one of their other mainstream hits. After the last note was struck and the mic was put down, the band gave out sincere thank yous to everyone in the house. With a quick bow and many handshakes and hi-fives the band exited and called it a night.
