Press Kittens, Part 1

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.

wiedersehen!



-Aubin

Myspace Race.

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:



-Aubin

Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat

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!

-Aubin

Dead Carnival Demo Recording; or, the past two 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

Recording, Vietnam, and Anxiety Closets

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.  

First

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.

-Aubin