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’ve found my first group of friends in my new life. It’s such a horrible, cliché phrase, “my new life,” but considering how severed I feel from the people I knew even two months ago I think it’s fitting. I went to a free show at SPACE one evening and left knowing an awesome set of new friends, one of whom is now my boyfriend. I’m always amazed by how one thing can set off a chain of events. I had met my boyfriend and his friends before, in some cases waaaay before, but I didn’t click in with them until that night. I believe in timing, certainly. I actually met them/him the night of the first Gin Circus show at Geno’s when one of the bands on the bill had to cancel and the band my boyfriend was in was one of two bands who stepped up to fill in for them. Who knows how many times I’d run into him before that and just don’t remember it. He’s friends and roommates with the guys in Huak and I remember them being around for as long as I’ve been hanging out in Portland. Case in point, here’s a picture of me and Jake from about two years ago (I agree with Jake's idea that if I ever play on the same bill as Huak again this should be the image on the flyer):
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!
I suppose I owe a blog post. This past month has been ridiculous and not generally in a good way. But that's in the past and I'd rather move on and not think about it again. One good thing did come out of it, though (other than a fascinatingly shaped bruise on my leg. Bruises are so pretty). I've decided not to drink again until further notice. Not that I'll be a teetotaler from now on, but while I don't mind other people drinking around me I can't handle anything stronger than ice water. It's for the best, anyway, since buying drinks has been cutting into my budget a lot lately. Moving on...
The 22nd will be a very busy evening. Alex, as you may or may not know, also plays in a band called Blue Mire and they happen to be playing a show the exact same night across town at the Dogfish Cafe. They're quite good in their own right and if you haven't seen them before, here's a video I took at one of their shows:
While that's good because it means double money that evening for Alex and all, it does mean it's a bit complicated logistically. Both shows can and will be done, though, it just means that we will have to be second in the line-up at the very latest. Ah, well, things always work out as they're supposed to. This brings up something else , though-- the show on the 22nd will be the last Gin Circus show for a while. Essentially and most simply it's out of convenience. Once school starts again we will both be taking a full course of classes in addition to working on other school activities. It just doesn't make sense when we both have about one semester left to try and deal with a band also. When we do end up doing something Gin Circus again, though, it will no doubt be better and more musically unified. As Alex says, it's impossible for a band to really break up nowadays as long as all band members are alive.
In the meantime, though, I've returned to my solo stuff. Or, in other words, just Aubin Thomas. It seems to be going fairly well and I've leapt from around 1400 fans on myspace to a little over 2200. I know that doesn't mean much but it's still nice to see. I'm not quite sure how I'll perform solo yet, though-- for one thing I like having someone else to play off of when I'm on stage and secondly I would feel more comfortable with a piano or guitar or something to put between me and the audience but instead I just have my voice and my computer (and who knows how long this computer will last with all the heavy vibrations I'm putting it through during performance and practice. I must stop setting it down on live amps). I'm enjoying the infancy of this solo identity, though. I like taking press photos and creating demos and all of that. I'm taking more pictures this weekend, but for now here is one of my current favorites and I bet you can't guess which opera singer inspired the look:
I'm sure there'll be more to report later. I'll keep using the Gin Circus blog even while Gin Circus is on hiatus. After all, I'm still 50% of the band.
There's so much drama on so many fronts of my life right now that there's not much band news to discuss as a result. While I wait with baited breath (and hook) for things to be resolved here is a video I made for one of Alex's solo songs that has since become absorbed into the Gin Circus repertoire. He calls it "M Nxt Lve" and I just say "My Next Love" because it's easier for me to type. Made in a garage and starring me, here it is:
This will probably be another relatively short post- I'm feeling a need to run (or rather) drive as far as I can away from everything. Wherever I run out of gas I'll just live there from now on...until I miss my bed and then I'll come home. In the meantime, Gin Circus update!
I'm slowly getting the press kit together. I'm allowing myself to be slow because our demo isn't even fully mixed yet. We actually still have two more songs to record. But once that's done I need to have the rest of the press kit set to go. It will all work out, I'm sure. A friend of ours, Bob Ulrich, has agreed to take photos of us for the kit, which is exciting since I love his photography. Here's two he took of Alex not too long ago:
I've also been in arrangements with the new editor of Words and Images (the literary journal I used to work for) for us to play the Words and Images fall party. There's poetry and short story readings and then some bands play. It should be good and, assuming it is at Space Gallery again, it would fulfill one of my venue goals (leaving one left in Portland: Empire Dine and Dance). I've seen quite a few concerts that inspired me at Space so to actually be on that stage myself would be awesome. Instead of just sitting on the edge of it like i normally do, of course.
Another important development is that my goal of finding a place for my cousin's band to play in Maine was finally realized yesterday. Meg, the awesome Dooryard-ian woman who booked us for our first show on my assurances that we could rock hard despite our acoustic samplings. The Dooryard itself is awesome, an arts community in a big old house that has artists and musicians and graffitti all over the walls- I'd love to live there, although the paint fumes would probably kill me. Here's their little section of the web: http://www.myspace.com/dooryard108 Anyway, Meg booked the new gig at Slainte, which will be interesting because it's four bands in a very narrow space. August 22 was the only time the band (Take One Car, if you were curious) was in Maine since they had gigs on either side of that date so I'm just thankful a venue worked out. We're also playing with Dead Man's Clothes (a local band), and Stereofidelics (who I've not seen but are aparently from North Carolina). It will be awesome and there will no doubt be some blogging afterward.
I wish people read this blog so that I could reply to comments and have something more ot write about. But right now, I'm ADD-ing out of my skull and need to get out of the house.
Depeche Mode has 307,995. Lily Allen has 430,785 of them. My Chemical Romance has 1,094,840. Of what, exactly? Myspace friends of course. And now Gin Circus has, as of this moment that I'm writing this, 1,300 friends on Myspace. I think that Alex, although he generally supports what I do online, kind of scoffs at the idea of being pleased with a high amount of Myspace friends. But I can't help but be happy! Even though I'm sure a lot of those 1,300 friends only friended our profile to up their own friend count I think that having that many speaks well of us. It says that not only are we actively promoting ourselves (and taking our goals seriously) but, superficially, it could also look like everyone who had friended us had checked our music out before doing that (granted, we have 1,378 profile views so it's not exactly that far off to guess that). Anyhow, our first gig was booked through someone who I'd friended on our Myspace, so it does have a real world effect to be Myspace friends with people. There's also the practical aspect of Myspace being used as a temporary band website, some place to direct people to when they want to hear what our music sounds like.
Speaking of Myspace, one of our next shows is being booked through there-- with a band from New York who had said on their own Myspace page that they needed a place in Maine to play in August. They're very good and this show will happen even if we have to host it in someone's basement and pass a jar around to cover their travel and give them a bit of profit as well. If you're interested *and you should be!) they're called Take One Car, and their Myspace is here: http://www.myspace.com/takeonecar Next stop: Twitter! I'm saving that for tour, though.
In the meantime, we are having another recording session tomorrow. Thanks to the perrils of home recording we've had two unusable takes per song but in the long run it is cheaper. In the meantime, I've designed the CD art for the live demo and in another effort to save money will be drawing on each CD by hand. This is also known as putting my partially completed degree in illustration to good work. Here's the rough template on computer paper with a bic pen:
The cat is because being somewhat cat-like has been a theme of my personality for about three or four years. Since I have a somewhat bad memory and three or four years is about as far back as my vivid memories go I like to think I've always acted a bit like a cat. It's most obvious in the fact that I say "meow" an awful lot, something Alex has taken to responding in kind to when I do it. We're strange, but if my brother and I fancy ourselves kittens there's nothing terribly wrong with it. Anyhow, at least for talking like cats talk to one another, it's only a mark of how at ease we are in each others' company; after all, I wouldn't openly meow at a lawyer or a congressman or something. But I digress....I'll be drawing on the CDs which, assuming we actually succeed in making music our careers, might make them worth something in the future and that would be a nice treat for all involved.
As far as a personal update is concerned, I've been limping around lately because I busted my right big toe and bruised up the inside of my left ankle within an hour of each other this past Thursday. Both were my fault but I now know that Alex is capable of giving me a piggy back ride down a brick sidewalk, which is information I'm sure will come in handy at some point should I ever again find myself unable to walk back to a friend's apartment cos my leg hurts. I ought to be a good girl and finish some of my overdue summer coursework this evening and I also should either finish watching News Radio or stop watching it and do my homework. I'm not sure which I'll do.
In conclusion, to continue the cat theme, I will now show off my pillowcase:
Last night's show at Slainte was...tiring. The venue is run by a very nice man and we're thankful that he booked us to play there, but the layout of the venue itself is less than ideal. This is because there is a big structural support pole in the middle of the stage. Inevitably, this became a problem for us because 1)it was normally where I'd stand in relation to Alex, 2)it led to intense feedback wherever I stood because it caused me to stand in the way of the speaker, 3)it meant I had to get ankle-sprainingly creative with how I could be seen. At the beginning of the show I stood in front of the pole but by the end of it I was standing on the couch next to the stage and stupidly jumped down hard for emphasis during our cover of New Order's song "Temptation" and did a funny thing to my ankle. It's fine now, but doing that in heels was stupid. Hopefully it looked good.
There were some photos from last night as well, but you can't really tell how tiny the place is. Here's me on the couch trying my damndest to be an engaging entertainer:
anything shot from below is just not a good angle on us...that being said, it's times like this that I'm glad I am for the most part over my eating disorder. A few years ago I would've taken the bad angle personally and tried to starve away my bone structure; now I've come to terms with the fact that native american blood and a lineage of sturdy women in my family means I will forever be round-faced and built like a gymnast (which was not a problem when I actually did gymnastics for five years and was quite good at it). I could, however, stand to be more toned, but that's easily fixed. I've had this discussion with Alex, actually, since, although we both have scant detail on our native american histories, we appear to be from the same tribe however many centuries ago. There's nothing you can do against broad bone structure except own it and make it work for you. I think we're doing pretty good, as the below photos from last night show that we're learning to find good camera angles:
the lesson? tilt head down, look mysterious. But enough narcissism! there's tons of interesting things going on!
We played with two impressive bands yesterday night: Do It To Julia and Jazz Rehab. We talked to both bands afterward and it strengthened my belief that Gin Circus would be a good touring band. Talking about how touring goes logistically and everything seemed do-able. We're mixing our demo right now and Jazz Rehab (who were selling CDs at the show) was saying how they'd done theirs home recorded like we had but had it professionally mixed. The point is it seems good. We also have a clear plan of where we're going next, which is also refreshing. Alex and I are brother and sister and tend to think in scarily similar ways- it makes for an organized band mentality without really trying.
Ok, I'm pretty tired still despite having had black coffee in a soup bowl earlier. Nevertheless, I must treadmill and do coursework for my summer courses and later on this evening I have a movie datenight with my mother, who is being supportive of the band (thank goodness!). Will write more in the coming days!
Recording is more or less done. Alex is in charge of mixing them and I hope he leaves some of my incidental talking in the mix. I have a bad habit of speaking nonsense much of the time and a lot of it got picked up before and after recording takes. My favorites thus far are on the same song, "Clementine," at the beginning of which I'm in the background saying "pillows have feathers in their stomaches, like birds?" and at the end say dreamily "oh, lovey." The first is due to my reading W.O. Mitchell's novel "Who Has Seen the Wind" and finding that particular sentence funny enough to read aloud and the second is due to my equally bad habit of not pronouncing the "L" in "lovely." I think they fit in with the sentiment of the song, which is, for all intents and purposes, a fucked up story of obsessive love. We shall see, though; The demo is still in its infancy, much as I would like to rush it.
Yesterday, though meant to be a day off, ended up being a photoshoot and a mini rehearsal. "Clementine," the song I mentioned above, is being premiered at the gig we're playing this coming tuesday at Slainte Wine Bar so we practiced that rather quietly, but there was still much guitar playing and singing. Our little festival party wandered down to the carnival to watch the fireoworks and I handed off my camera to my friend Vanessa who took some gorgeous photographs of Alex and myself wandering around. This is one of my favorites- I don't know what's so funny or why this moment happened but it's adorable and I'm glad it was captured:
The rest of the photos are on the myspace and the facebook fan page (http://www.myspace.com/gincircus). The evening was good all in all, and ended with Alex, myself, and two of our friends contemplating the intricacies of being a professional children's singer as we watched an old VHS tape of a Rick Charette concert. If you don't know of Rick Charrette, you probably aren't from Maine and I direct you to his official site here: http://www.pinepoint.com/rick.html . We all decided there was comedy gold in such a job, but it could only be done justice by the Showtime network.
Today I woke up feeling off mentally and emotionally and therefore our band practice was off mentally and emotionally. Alex is deliciously patient with me, though, and we muddled through until 6pm when he had to go practice with his other band, Blue Mire. We worked out some covers to sing at Slainte and ate buttered toast. We recorded a scratch version of our cover of New Order's song "Temptation" which ended up being rather good, although I can't decide if I should post it to the myspace or not. Once Alex left I attempted to write some happy songs and found myself incapable of penning cheerful lyrics. Barring that, I took a "dead photo" for my collection, which basically means I posed myself to look like I'd died falling down the stairs and took a picture. This brings me to another topic for future blog discussion: why I am not Amanda Palmer yet share a ridiculous amount of interests and activities with her. She recently put out a companion book to her album Who Killed Amanda Palmer which contains dead photos of herself with accompanying stories by Neil Gaiman. While I greatly anticipate receiving my pre-ordered copy I feel I have to point out that I've been taking dead photos of myself for quite some time now and don't intend to stop just because Amanda Palmer has a book of similar work now. If anything, I hope my dead photos will be part of a movement of such pictures and we can all live in dead photo harmony. But, yes, I am not intending to copy her in my music or my art-- she is older than I am and likes similar things and therefore got to explore them publicly first. I consider myself no better or worse than her just part of a similar circle of influence (although I am jealous of how well she can play dead). Here is my dead photo, for the curious:
and if you think that's awesome I strongly recommend Amanda's book since it is double awesome due to there actually being stories accompanying the photos (with Gaiman influence, no less!) Case in point:
You may order it here: http://whokilledamandapalmer.com/
But, band practice is at 10am and Tuesday's show is at 10pm. That with coursework in between means this tired kitten needs sleep. -Aubin
Good morning- er, late afternoon. I've woken up and am mobile after a forced hour of sleeping in. I've been getting up at 9am for practice so attmpting to sleep in until noon just doesn't work for my internal clock anymore. Listening to Ben Folds, thinking about how special every single thing about this band is feeling nowadays. I've landed. Landed where? well, where I'm supposed to be, of course.
The reason why I've been getting up so relativly early these days is because Alex and I have begun recording our live demo. This is new territory for me (but not for him, luckily). As I watch him turn my computer study room into a miniature motown with microphones, amps, guitars, and headphones everywhere I can't help but ask questions. He doesn't mind, which is the nice thing about Alex. One of my main questions is: if we're not really live (i.e.- we're recording on seperate tracks and channels and aren't in front of anyone) why is it called a live demo? His answer was more or less that it's live because it's not polished off, it's got flaws in it and it's only to record what one could expect from us live. We've recorded two songs entirely now and have the drums down for a third track. I think we're shooting for five songs since, in my opinion, odd numbers compell people to choose favorites which would mean they'll listen more carefully to choose theirs from the demo. This may, however, be the little kid logic that I revert to sometimes and don't realize it. Either way, I'll write details here when everything's settled and done and let you know how you can get a copy of our demo (live or otherwise).
I also spent yesterday drawing up posters and images to promote us with. In light of Alex protesting (rightly so) that it was a bit lazy to revert to circus imagery I've decided that it's time to dip into my Fabulous Closet of Repeating Anxieties and pillage for imagery therein. What I came up with was the Vietnam war. Before I sound sacriligious or offensive, allow me to try and give a brief explanation of why I feel I have a right to use such things in my art. First of all, no one owns war: every single bit of war influences and reaches far outside those in the actual battle, even for generations afterward. My father is a Vietnam Veteran who, while wounded there in combat, went on to stay in the Marines in other capacities and served until his retirement when I was two years old. The majority of how I view my father is affected by Vietnam. Everything from his injured leg limiting his movement (recently alleviated a bit with hip replacement) to his views of my classmates in grade school who wanted to be soldiers, to his ever-present red hat with the Marines logo on it has to do with Vietnam. It changed my father and unless I have a time machine I'll never know a pre-war version of him. I feel I inherited his anxiety that kicks in when the baseboard heater clicks like a landmine trigger; I feel there's a part of me that will always be connected to the war because, combined with being born so late in my father's life, it's both a wall and a window into his life. It's the one thing I know for certain about him. So I went into that anxiety and poked around a bit and took pictures with a timer until I improvised a pose that struck me. I showed it to Alex and he provided a reference photograph and this was the resulting product:
I'm proud of it. We're having bumper stickers made up of it. Partly in the hopes that this will end up plastered all over everything in the Greater Portland area like Boombazi stickers on stop signs. As for the "war paint" on my face in the picture, I'll have to explain that in another blog sometime- it's part cat, part native american ancestry frustration, but it can wait to be explained more than that.
Tonight is more or less a day off for us. I'm having a small get together and there are fireworks at the Clam Festival later. We're not recording, but we're taking promotional pictures at the carnival set up downtown. I guess as long as Alex and I are together there will always be band things to do, but I love that so I don't mind at all.
Here's the first blog entry (obivously). I figure that it will be good to have a sort of feelings archive that I can look back through once we get a bit further a long in what we're doing with our lives. No doubt I'll laugh at these entries because most of my thoughts about the band are based on hope but decorated with worry and anxiety like sprinkles on some bizare cupcake. Also like a cupcake, the band situation is sweet, beautiful, and makes me happy. Alex maintains that most of the things I say are nonsequiters and I'm inclined to agree so I offer an apology in advance in that habit travels into the blogging.
We played our first show on the 13th (Monday) at Geno's. It was very strange but felt very right. At that point, we had been a band for a month. We'd spent that month being a whirlpool of ideas and music and somehow it all worked- everything we throw into this whirlpool blends in perfectly. The night before the show I didn't sleep, partially out of fear, partially because in the summer I feel there's too much to do to sleep (by the end of everything I'd been up 35 hours, which is a new record I hope to not break). Alex and I practiced for a while but then decided to go for lunch. After a fairly healthy Whole Foods cafeteria lunch and some questionable gelato (we initially were going to share some Turkish Coffee gelato but once I tasted it I realized that it was basically black pepper tasting and Alex fronted me some money to buy a cookies and cream gelato instead and he ate the black pepper one) we then left to go and practice. After that, though, I started to feel the crunch ("you know nothing of the crunch!") as the time drew closer to soundcheck. We went for a walk, which turned into a drive, which turned into us driving around Cape Elizabeth and Portland talking everything out. It did calm me down a bit. He's played shows before, even been on tour before (granted, he has a good five years on me age-wise) but until the 13th my only singing in front of a large audience was in middle school when I sang solo in front of the jazz band (the song was "S'wonderful," if you're curious). This is different, though-- it's my lyrics, my clothing choices, my personality and it's so much more risky than parroting a Gershwin song. That's something I'll have to cover in a later blog, the band-as-inseperable-from-product idea. I believe in it, or at least my own version of it, and knowing people are buying us as people as well as our music is a very odd thought.
Soundcheck went smoothly and by 8pm we were let loose to go get some food. While I was the one who had been wanting food I didn't want it once we got onto the street, partly due to nerves, partly due to the realization that anything open that late would involve dairy of some sort and that wouldn't do favors for my vocals. So I watched Alex eat a sandwich and we talked more, mostly about how weird it was to know we were about to experience a moment we'd remember for the rest of our lives regardless of whether or not the band became anything after that first show. We walked back to Geno's around 8:50 and ended up going on around 9:45pm. In between that time I flitted around hugging and thanking friends who had come to support us and talking to my mom who had come to live vicariously through the experience (it was odd to see a professional, clean-cut looking 50 something woman sipping water at a rock club, but she's devoted I guess). Alex was more calm and chatted with some of our friends, occasionally telling me things would be okay when I bounced over to the table and then bounced off again like Tigger on speed.
The show went remarkably well. Alex's friend had been telling me that the Geno's crowd will hate you no matter what, but we got aplause after every song and my friend Vanessa told me afterward that some people who had been ignoring us prior to the music starting up came down from their perches by the pool table and watched us. A good sign indeed. We started with a cover of the Zombies' song "She's Not There," which I think was the right move. For future reference, this was our first set list:
1)"She's Not There" 2)Backstabber 3)Teeth 4)Joy Comes Down 5)News to Me 6)Colour Scientist 7) My Next Love 8)Blood of the Girl 9)Dresden
Alex broke two strings by the time we'd come to Blood of the Girl so Jake Lowry , whose band Huak was playing right after us, was nice enough to loan Alex his guitar for the last two songs if he promised to be careful with it, which he was. Thank goodness for that loan, though, because Blood of the Girl went perfectly and Dresden even moreso. People loved Dresden, which is funny because it's our only song in a major key and our first collaboration. That bodes well, I feel. Once we got offstage there were two comments people kept saying over and over: 1) "I can't believe this is your first show!" and 2) "You guys don't sound like anything I've heard before." The first one I was glad to hear, the second one worried me. Once I was re-assured that it was hyperbole or an empty compliment I began to wonder how one can market a band no one can directly categorize. I'll figure it out, mostly because I know there are bands out there we sound similar to, just not in Portland.
That's all there's time for for now. I must get to practice and everything and I'll try and write more later.
