Since Gin Circus is a duo it only works if there are two of us fully behind the band and, while I’ve not talked to Alex in a few weeks (though I could guess his feelings on it) I’m not interested in continuing the band so it’s over. Whatever, bands break up. Reasons? 1)why do you need any reasons?, 2)any reasons for my not wanting to be in Gin Circus anymore will probably be more interesting twenty years from now if I wrote an autobiography. You can read about it if I ever end up doing that. But I digress.
As part of closing this chapter of my life I’m cleaning out my hard drive of all things Gin Circus related and so I’m going to link the videos and stuff in this post and be done with it.
1. A cover of the Stone Ponies song “Different Drum.” This was taken during rehearsal for our last show. Ignore my self-indulgent hand motions. A song like this has to be sung with a purpose, I think, and I wanted to make sure whatever I did with my hands fit the content of the lyrics. I also overlaid two vocal tracks together to strengthen it so you could hear me over the guitar. No, the fan blowing my hair is not an intentional 80s rock video homage. It was overly hot in that kitchen.
2. Clementine, AKA- the song that never really was. Clementine was the first song we wrote together and it was exciting at the time—we sat in the living room until 1am writing it and even got as far as recording and mixing it for the Gin Circus demo (don't ask me whatever happened to that, its all on Alex's computer, last I knew). It was our Johnny Cash and June Carter song and also the most openly psychotic thing in our performance repertoire. Granted, I was the one who insisted on the Gone With the Wind reference of “I’ll crush your little skull in girl, to get him out of your head.” Whatever. This video has both the rehearsal and the live performance of the song because it shows one of the problems with Gin Circus: in rehearsal, we worked very well together—we joked, interacted, and had some semblance of musical chemistry that made it easier to create a coherent performance. On stage, especially in this video, it just looks like two people who are on the same stage, singing the same song but are in two different mindsets. I feel awkward watching it because, well, it doesn’t work outside of the kitchen. The end.
3. The first attempt at Gin Circus photos. Mozaic photobooth style:
There’s more somewhere but honestly, and forgive my language, fuck it. My final points are: it could’ve been a decent band, but it wasn’t and it probably wasn’t one for a good reason. I have a feeling I’m meant to be solo and considering that the first two Gin Circus shows were booked only because I’d been asked to do solo shows and was too afraid then to do them alone I think that the band was meant to be short lived anyway. I’m more confident now, I can stand on my own, blah blah blah the end. Although I sometimes falter in it, I do try and attempt to never burn bridges, I just don’t travel over those bridges anymore if I don’t want to. But enough metaphors and defending of my choices when no one is even bothered with why I made such choices.
This was Gin Circus when it started:
This is Gin Circus as it ended:
Now, no more about it. Closed due to prohibition. Onto more sobering activities. Enough of my bad puns.
Oh, goodness. I feel like I start every blog entry with “Oh, Goodness,” whether I leave it in or not. This time it’s good, though. The transitional phase I felt I was coming into is actually coming to fruition, which is always nice. I have a lot to write about as a consequence. I’ll try and address all of the points individually but also succinctly because I don’t want to press the limits of those who do read this blog.
----My mother and I have a complex relationship (well, who doesn’t have a complex relationship with their parents?) but one thing that is irrefutable is that she supports me in being my strange little artsy self 100%. An example of this is that this past Friday she gave me her collection of antique coins, 14 silver ingots, and a few old rings and took me to Maine Gold and Silver to sell them to help pay for production of my solo CD. In total, I walked away with $320 to put toward production and considering I had about $20 left from my Gin Circus Band Fund I’m very grateful for that. So, even though she doesn’t read this, thanks mom.
----Things with the Dooryard are really taking off. This new group of people in there that I’m a part of are so motivated to clean the place up and make it functional that the house already looks much more stellar one month after our first meeting than it did in the few months I’d been visiting before I became a part of it. Remember those pictures I posted a while ago of Alex spray painting “R.I.Y.L.” on a wall with blue paint? Well, that wall is in the room where myself and my friend Tessa want to have our art space and honestly the presence of the R.I.Y.L., although I’m sure it was fun to make at the time, was getting on everyone’s nerves. This is because we’re in the middle of readying the house for our upcoming lease renewal and having things like that on an otherwise blank white wall send the wrong impression of what we’re trying to do. So, this Sunday Tessa, Nick, and I painted it over with a cheerful, mustard-y yellow. This is the final photo of R.I.Y.L. I believe it means “Recommend If You Like,” and I recommend that it be painted over.
Here’s the first coat of paint. The letters still show through because the blue is darker, but we will yet vanquish it:
I also swept down both staircases of the Dooryard House before Tessa arrived. It felt good to see because it produced about two pounds of sand, dirt, and dust bunnies, but was also kind of gross because when I blew my nose after I was done it was as if I’d been working in a coal mine and had caught the black lung. It’s getting into a more orderly, awesome state, though, so I’ll gladly suffer temporary black lung for the sake of a clean art space.
I think it’s a rule that if Jake and I are in the same photo one of us has to have our face obscured (usually me); por ejemplo, here’s a recent one of him playing w/ Ryan in their “Mark Summers” band with me and Boyfriend Jason looking on from what seems like the VIP section of the show but is just us trying to not be on the receiving end of Ryan’s disturbingly skimpy outfit: (Photo by Jon Donnell)
------On the music front, I now have my own website and domain name, www.aubinthomas.com . Now, I’m professional. Exciting: and if you can read the other tab I have up on Opera, yes, I am watching a documentary about child beauty pageants.
I’m also trying to be less serious in my songs. Thanks to a renewed interest in Flight of the Conchords and Garfunkel and Oates I’ve been trying to take a lighter approach to my angsty feelings I need to get out through song. If you’ve not heard of the latter band, I suggest you view some of their very quality videos:
http://garfunkelandoates.com/music/clips/
My favorite is “Pregnant Women Are Smug,” because it’s true, for the most part they are:
I’m off to class now, the last semester of college and all. I’m excited but a bit scared. I don’t want to write about that, though, because it’s boring. More to follow later about other subjects. -Aubin
This week has mostly been stressful but, as of noon today the stress is over. In fact, I was a very productive kitten. As of today: 1)both my summer courses are completed, 2)I’ve put my name on the wait-list for workstudy funds, which means I’d get paid for the Art Director work I do this coming semester, and 3)I’ve budgeted out my financial situation as far out as January. The last part is especially good because it looks like I’m one step closer to living in Portland, which will be excellent. I have four days of vacation starting tomorrow and then school begins again on Monday. This summer has gone by very fast and it’s been extremely strange. For example, the Rise and Fall of The Gin Circus happened over the course of two months. It honestly seems so much more drawn out than that. I’ve talked to a few people about it and it seems like this summer has been strange for everyone I know. And now, at the end of summer, a five year old boy is moving into my house and I am undoubtedly moving out. Life is strange and I often forget it is quite long even though it feels severely condensed.
Yesterday I had my first photoshoot as a solo artist. Since it was my friend taking the pictures I insisted on her using my camera so that I could get the pictures onto my computer more easily than if she’d had to email them to me. That was a mistake I think because she wasn’t familiar with how it worked and the majority ended up too blurry to use. We know better now. The photos consisted of me running The Dooryard wearing borrowed crinoline and a white fur hat playing and posing. It was fun and ended with free pesto, sundried tomato, and artichoke pizza with three lovely people. I don’t think I’ll get tired of the open feeling I get from people at the Dooryard—I feel like everyone I run into there on a regular basis is there for the same reasons I am and we’re always willing to help each other with whatever strange thing we’re working on. I have four pictures from the photoshoot on my facebook fan page, but for fun, here’s some that would’ve been neat if the lighting had been better:
Pointing out a bruise that was fading on my leg, in mid-explanation of it:
Playing around the innards of a destroyed piano:
Looking all flash-faced and washed out while walking across a board:
And here is one that’s well lit but you can’t see my face. It shows what a neat-looking place this room in the Dooryard is with just one clip lamp on the ceiling:
It’s a bit scary striking out on my own. I don’t feel that Alex and I are communicating as well as we were originally and since there’s no Gin Circus gigs booked coming up we can both afford to have a break from each other. Who knows, though, right? I could be wandering into something fantastic by being on my own. It worked for Cher, Tina Turner, and Annie Lennox, didn’t it? Alex had a point about the current Gin Circus repertoire anyway: when I write songs I tend to bring them to him with music and everything and those are already finished and don’t need him. Gin Circus should be a group effort musically and if I’m incapable of leaving a song unfinished when I write it then I should just be a solo artist. There’s something freeing to that anyway, promotionally- I only have to navigate my schedule for booking, I only have to answer to myself for things in my promotional material, and I only have to explain to myself why I did what I did in a song.
And more importantly, people who have seen Gin Circus now know who I am and that I can sing, which is good because I don’t feel so isolated anymore. I’m in no rush, though. I’m planning on leaving Gin Circus songs behind and generating bunches of new material before I even begin to actively try and book gigs. I also have to wait until I don’t have such a black eye look going on over my right eye (my photobooth is flipped, but I assure you it's over my right eye):
Alright. If I’m going to go out this evening and celebrate my brief vacation I’ll have to shower or nap or both and then get a move on. -Aubin
Oh, goodness, I’m still exhausted from last night’s show. Well, from yesterday in general, actually, because not a single thing went as planned. I woke up in a strange mood, probably from the rain and also because yesterday’s show was/is the only show for August. That’s a lot of pressure, if you think about it a certain way which, being rather high-strung, I do. I’ve been thinking lately about how I would like to look when I’m performing. I have a certain “look” that I love but I also have elements that I want to incorporate into that look and that’s where I get tripped because. I have a tendency to love rather antiquated styles and that, thanks to the steam punk and punk cabaret movements, has seen a wider resurgence lately. This is good on one hand because it means that there ends up being more available accessories for me to collect since there’s a market for them now, but on the other hand it also means I’m up against some gorgeous competition in terms of overall style. Case in point Miss Amanda Palmer and Miss Meow Meow:
I think it’s inevitable that there would be some similarities between whatever I do and what other people who love that style do—I mean, after all, we’re all drawing from similar influences; it’s all in interpretation. For last night’s look I was drawing from way, way back. Namely, from 1920s and 1930s movie stars like Mary Kornman: If you haven’t heard of her, you can learn a bit more about her here: http://www.marykornman.com/ . Her childhood style was gorgeous. Anyway…I ended up trying to primp my hair up with mousse and hairspray and an hour with a curling iron but, alas, my hair is so damaged and traumatized that it maintained a nice 1970s Gilda Radner poofy-ness for about 20 minutes before flattening out into loose, flat curls. Oh, well. I added purple eyeshadow up to my eyebrows, heavy black eyeliner, and called it good. I don’t have any close-ups of my make-up, but here is a photo to give you an idea of my overall outfit:
The sticker on my belt is an addition given to me by a wonderful little girl (by little I mean three years old) who was my constant fan during the show. It was quite funny, really—her mother would try to bring her over to Alex’s side of the stage to see what he was doing and she would fight and demand to be brought back over to me. I find that adorable even if it is only because I, in her words “look like Coraline.” Also a compliment. The child has good taste in movies.
The lead-up to the show itself was stressful to me because I have yet to remember/get used to the idea that rock shows rarely start when they’re listed to. It was doubly complicated because Alex was playing with Blue Mire as well that evening and they learned quite late in the game that it would be best for Alex to play with them first and then come over after instead of the other way around as we’d planned on. So after a bit of apologetic conversation from me with the other bands we switched our first place slot with Take One Car. Take One Car, by the way, are a great group of guys. My cousin is their drummer, but I’d think they’re a great group of guys anyway. They’re a bit too loud for a small venue like Slainte but I think it went well considering. I’d like to take a brief moment to plug both The Stereofidelics (who are not only breathtaking live with their multi-tasking and talent but who have been touring non-stop for the past 9 months) and Dead Man’s Clothes (they’re one of those rare bands you would be hard pressed to cram into a category). Dead Man’s Clothes is local so if you’re in Portland, ME see them live; Stereofidelics are more likely than not coming to your tow soon so check out their schedule:
http://www.myspace.com/deadmansclothes
http://www.myspace.com/thestereofidelics
On another side note, I heard from Meg (the awesome girl who booked both this show and the first one for me/Gin Circus at Geno’s back in July) that Ian, the owner of Slainte, said that last night’s show was possibly the best show that Slainte has ever had. I’m honored to have contributed to that if it’s true. Even if it’s not, I’m still glad to have been a part of it.
Alex arrived right in time, just as T.O.C. was playing their final song. It was an uncomfortable dynamic but I’m not absolutely certain what all of that means yet so I’m going to lock it up and let it ferment into something more tangible before I explore it or figure out what that means for future gigs. We’d already agreed to step way back from the momentum we’d developed with the band so if that was our last show until heaven knows when I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll see. I’m getting ready to explode into Solo-ness so stay tuned for that. I’ve come too far this summer to give up on singing/performing my music now. That being said, there’s a few videos floating around from the show and here’s two of them: Backstabber (the slowed down version to play up on Alex’s new baritones guitar), and Dresden (I’ve had a few people ask and, no, the song has nothing to do with the Dresden Dolls, it was a waking dream I had that I wrote down verbatim and we put it to music):
I think my voice is maturing. I know this because I don’t recognize it when I hear it in these videos but I’m impressed. Good thing I don’t have to think about how to sing, it just happens. This Tuesday I’m taking press kit photos for my solo press kit. Even if things were the most hunky dory they could ever be in the whole entire universe with Alex, I think I’m growing into too dominant a personality to stay in a band forever. It’s just having to happen much sooner than I expected. So it goes. I’ll post about that photoshoot after it happens, though. That’s it for now. I leave you with an evil looking photo of me where I am either casting a spell, preparing to eat someone’s soul, or possibly both.
I've decided that I enjoy blog entries with titles like they had on Rocky and Bullwinkle: The Deep Six- or- The Old Moose and the Sea. Yes.
In an attempt to both avoid my homework and some unpleasant realizations about my current situation I’ve been cleaning my room. This is, you would think, a simple enough task. That would be, however, a wrong assumption because my room contains ten years worth of material possessions. I kind of feel it will take me another ten years just to wade through everything in my room let alone my house. It has, however, provided some interesting reminders of who I used to be. I’ve found a clay jar in the shape of Lord Morpheus from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman that I created in high school; I found purple sunglasses that I thought were awesome when I was thirteen but are actually hideous. Some of this cleaning also includes deleting files off of my computer which has also lead to some interesting discoveries.
For example, here’s a photo from 2004 where I had, as a 16 year old, used MS Paint to show my excitement about being photographed in the audience of a Rocktopus show. I kind of miss the ridiculousness of the band name Rocktopus. It’s more endearing, I think than As Fast As and I’d be more likely to flaunt Rocktopus merchandise than I would Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia merchandise. Ah, well, I can’t complain since Spencer has, in all my interactions with him, been a friendly type of guy and I like his music:
I also discovered a small collection of travel photographs from my time in Australia and Ireland. In the interest of space and since I don’t think anyone else will find these interesting, I’ve just chosen two representative photos. The first is from Australia, when I was 15. Here I am sporting a very fashionable hairnet after my tour of the Cadbury factory. I’m told they don’t do the same type of tour anymore for health inspection reasons (the tour I went on took the group down onto the actual production floor and we got to taste candy as it literally came off the conveyer belt. I’m glad I got to see that before it disappeared):
In Dublin (which was my second time in Dublin but I was three years old during the first trip and don’t really remember it) I have very few pictures of me. It’s mostly touristy things like “oh, look, the Guiness factory. Exciting.” The few pictures I do have of myself in Dublin that trip are from when I met U2 (Oh, Aubin, your young innocence made you so fearless then) and I really don’t want to subject anyone to my “hey, here’s me hugging Adam Clayon because bass layers are sexy” photos so instead I’m opting for the photo of me outside their studio at sunset. I met them about an hour after the picture (once again, I can’t believe I thought nothing of waiting on a dark street with only three other people outside some rockstar’s studio in the middle of a chilly February after a 6 hour flight. I kind of miss that ambition, actually):
Okay, I miss the ambition but not my desire to wear the shirt of a band when I go to meet the band. That’s just creepy. The best thing of all was finding one of my first solo albums. No one wanted this one, which is funny if you track my musical history in correleation with what name I created the music under. Either way, This was my last album to date produced under my full and real name of Aubin Thomas (although once I’ve made sure the Gin Circus demo is in order I may gather up some solo tracks I’ve been working on and release that somehow). The cover is silly so I won’t subject you to it but I like the ‘Choirgirl Hotel’ vibe of the back cover so here’s a scan of it for your enjoyment. You can also wonder what the songs were like based off their titles: Out of 13 tracks none of them have made it this far. I’m not sure if I should be comforted because it means I produce more material than I need or sad because I’m wasting songs. Since I already mentioned it, here’s a shortened version of my musical history in terms of names: 1)Aubin Thomas; 2)Mary Kelley [a weird kind of riot grrrl band I was in for two or three months in 2005 and of which there are, thankfully, no pictures]; 3)Mad Ophelia, the baby version of the things I’m doing now. Mad Ophelia looks like this: 4)Nelly & Sylvia, in which I was Sylvia to Helen Ray’s Nelly. There are certainly pictures of this band since I went all the way to London to take pictures with Helen/Nelly. Had to get my money’s worth with shots like this: 5)Aubin Thomas (technically, I went back to being solo under my own name before Gin Circus existed, which bumps this up to 5). You know what I look like, no picture necessary. 6)Gin Circus. Also known as these people:
And there you have it. The next blog will most likely be on Sunday after the show at Slainte is but an increasingly distant memory. Rehearsal tomorrow (or is it practice? The theater in me says rehearsal, the rock chick in me says practice). Tomorrow promises to be unforgettable, I just hope it’s unforgettable in happy ways this time unlike the past three promisingly unforgettable events that ended in ways that made me kind of wish life had a reset button. Alright! Enough avoiding. I now return to my homework. -Aubin
Time for another blog update. This won’t be a very eventful one, but then again they won’t really be eventful for a few years or so anyway. At least for somewhat band-related things because every day could fill a blog between events and thoughts but no one wants to hear about that from me.
Yesterday was the first band rehearsal of August and the first one since a pretty intense fight we had at the beginning of the month. Things now more or less resolved, practice went beyond my expectations and we were very productive considering that: A) it was about 90 degrees farenheit in Alex’s kitchen (aka, the practice space) and B) we had three hours before my evening class to create a setlist for the August 22nd show and get back into the rhythm of being a functional, performing band. I kind of feel that, while this will be our last show for a while because of school and such, it won’t be as final as that sounds. I absolutely love performing with Alex and I think he likes being in Gin Circus too so while I won’t actively be looking for gigs I’m open to the possibility of us playing some shows during the school year. We’ll see. In the meantime, we recorded a video during rehearsal of our version of the Well Below the Valley. It’s the most intense song we perform and I never fail to be close to tears by the end of it. As we interpret it (and as some versions of the history of the song suggest) it’s an interaction between a woman with a rather sinful past who encounters Jesus at a well. We play our parts as we sing and get so into it that when Alex is in character and he locks eyes with me I truly believe it when he sings that my future is to burn in hell for everything I’ve done in the song. Here’s some screen captures to show a hint of the intensity this song generates for us:
That's hellfire, brother. Here's the video:
The shaking of the camera toward the end is because, well, Alex throws his whole self into playing the guitar and that means that the camera was shaking. It's not the worst thing, though-- that same day while he was playing some glasses in the sink fell over and made a horrible crashing and breaking sound. So rock and roll, breaking things. I approve.
That's it for now and, lest you think we were traumatized by our video recording experience, here's a picture to show otherwise:
I generally try to spread my blogging out over a few days but I think that I have enough to write a short one now.
First off, I took pictures of the bruises on my left knee and the weird shaped bruise on my leg just above it. I’ll put it as a link instead of a picture because bruises freak some people out, but I think it’s neat because when I look down at the bruise it seems to be shaped like the number three. It’s even more interesting to me because I don’t remember getting it and therefore can’t figure out why it looks like the number three:
Today I took a big step into the adult world and paid my first rent as part of the Dooryard. I think I explained a little bit about the Dooryard in my previous post but it’s a sort of artist’s space collective that is contained in a house where musicians and visual artists can claim a room or a corner respectively and do whatever artistic thing their little hearts desire. That includes, to my great delight, drawing on the walls. It’s the type of structure I wanted to live in when I was in high school but never dared to dream existed. So, I’ve paid my money, gotten my key, and can now consider myself part of the Dooryard. It feels very promising and I intend to take some pictures there after I’ve claimed my corner (which will most likely be after the upcoming gig since that’s the most important extra-curricular activity on my plate at the moment).
As a side note to myself, I keep having a recurring dream about someone (the dream never says who) dying and I end up becoming a guardian for a baby through their will (the baby in the first dream was the daughter of one of my friends in real life although the friend didn’t die in the dream, but in the past two dreams the baby has been a boy). I’ve figured out what it more or less means only just this evening which hopefully means it will stop and I won’t have the dream tonight.
I spent a wonderful evening tonight (or, since it’s 2am now, yesterday night?) watching Blue Mire (just Marci, Cory, and Alex this time for the line-up) play at Venue in Freeport. It felt so special because Freeport is too far for Portland dwellers to consider traveling for a night out so it was just some Freeport locals and myself by the time that I got there. I recorded two song performances on my camera and took a bunch of pictures—that stage is so gorgeous to photograph:
The co-owner approached me and, upon finding out Alex and I were a band, was very interested in whether or not we had a demo CD and what kind of music we played. He was a very nice man and, in general, I’ve not been in a more positive feeling place in a long time. Everyone, even the toothless old man who complimented my Delirium tattoo by pointing, nodding, and grinning, was so welcoming and friendly; it was refreshing.
I also think that not drinking has improved my disposition greatly. I felt happier not feeling obligated to drink anything more than water and I enjoyed the smaller things in the whole experience more. If that makes any sense, after all it is quite late. I feel like by saying “I will not drink alcohol anymore” I’ve released myself from the obligation I used to feel about social drinking. I’m allowing myself to be confident with just water. Absolutely marvelous! Although, I must say I’ll miss finding pictures like these on my camera:
Ah, well. I can pose in silly ways sober too. It’s quite late and despite coffee I’m exhausted. After this episode of Bewitched (speaking of alcohol, there’s tons of booze on this show…) I think I’ll try to get some sleep and try and devote tomorrow to homework. Goodnight, world!
