sewer suckers invade

In this day and age you don't need a recording studio to record music. I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 that I have used to score a movie and finish up the bits and pieces from my upcoming new album (which will be called Open to Close, by the way). I'm a big fan of the show Weeds on Showtime. Each episode features a different artist doing their rendition of the theme, "Little Boxes." A week or two ago I decided I would try my hand at recording a version of theme. I used saxophone, bass clarinet, Fender Rhodes, and some other toys I have at my disposal.

Today my big plan was/is to record a second version of it. This time it'll be a cappella (or for those of you who don't speak Swedish, it'll be an all vocal version). This requires a relative amount of quiet from my Hollywood neighbors. Lo and behold, I sit down to fire up ProTools right as a gigantic blue truck pulls up in front of my apartment. This blue truck has a big label that says "Vactor Series 2100" on the side. It's currently set up camp and blocking one lane of traffic. It's also blocking my car from going anywhere. This truck is apparently a gigantic sewer-sucking vacuum cleaner. It has a long tentacle which it extended down a manhole and into the depths of hell. I guess it follows to reason that since in-home vacuum cleaners are loud, vacuum cleaners that are the size of a small house (or big truck in this case) would be proportionately several times louder than the regular ones.

This is my new neighbor:



Happily the Vactor Series has done all the sewer-sucking it needed to do in my neighborhood. It has moved on its merry way to mess up someone else's home studio, so I will return to the musical task at hand before a herd of buffalo, or the Hell's Angels decide to parade down my street.

Yet first I will leave you with these tidbits:

I saw Colin Hay play at the Canyon Club. He's a fantastic singer (I had to practice screaming along with "I can't get to sleep" during Overkill to see if I could hit the high notes), a great writer, and his in-between song banter is captivating.

I kid you not when I tell you that my upstairs neighbor is vacuuming his floor right now. Is this like yawning? Vacuuming is contagious, apparently.

I have a show at the Hotel Cafe on October 13th. It's a full band show.

Booyah!