New blog!

New Random Rock memory, this one from last night.  Enjoy!

Random Rock Memories: 2/21/09, National Underground

Last night was awesome, despite some setbacks at the beginning of the evening.  We got about four songs in and the crowd just kind of started coming in and didn’t stop — it was great!

 We tried out our cover of “Everybody Knows” for the first time, ever, at the rehearsal that afternoon, so I went for it.  I had asked T.D. to print out the lyrics for cue purposes, because Leonard Cohen is a mother of a verse-writer, but we forgot to take it off the printer, so I had to cue myself off the Blackberry.  The appearance was of a man texting during his own show.

 Audience member: You’re texting during your set?

Me: No, I was reading the last verses off the phone.  What?  No, I mean, Yeah!  I’m just getting texts from all my honies during my set, and they’re just blowing me up.  I keep saying, “Bitch, come to the show,” they keep saying, “Naw, have text-sex instead!”

Audience Member: I wish for you that that were true.

Me, Chris, and David, at the effing same time: So do I (So does he).

Good fun. 

Random Rock Memories: Paul finds the mirror.

2006.  Starlite Lounge.  I’m playing the Three-Penny Opry show, where they have a few songwriters get up each week and do intmiate performances that open themselves up to Q&A from the audience between numbers.

 Q: Don’t you have any happy songs about love?

A: I have a few, but they’re very hard to write.  When you’re in it, you don’t really want to take time out to write songs, you know?  You want to get right back to bed as soon as you get up, and keep building good memories, quickly, you know, before her inevitable betrayal taints them all! 

 ….and on the next block, a pin dropped and we knew….

pointless

…So, having deleted my personal livejournal, I’m going to start blogging a little more personally here.

For setting’s sake: I’m at the Sunburnt Cow, where brunch comes with an endless fountain of alcohol. You already know it’s one of my favorite brunches.

I took a trip back to Pittsburgh last week, which had some really great and really awful stuff about it. One awesome thing is that I found out about the Rowe/AMI thing that I’ll be posting in the news section later — another was watching John and Ginny become John and Ginny Rhoads, in the company of the always-awesome Brooke Mohr. Pictures of the Garter Incident may follow. Also, meeting and being wooed by the Prentiss babies! Awesome.

One thing that sucked was feeling like I’d put the ‘friend’ stamp on a few people too many (I had a four-day argument with my best friend, too) — another was having to spend a week away from my life here, which has recently come to include a new scene of friends (and one person who’s a little more than that) and a newfound sense of mobility.

Pittsburgh is by no means a larger city than New York, but it is a lot harder to get around on foot there than it is here. The subway system practically guarantees that everything is within walking distance — you’ll walk a few miles a day, but you will never come across a stretch of unwalkable road that you can’t easily brook using the MTA. I remember my last job search in Pittsburgh being very difficult because there was no satisfactory transit route to half of the jobs I was applying for.

Anyhow, I’m back! Googie’s on the 20th, Sidewalk in October. Reservoir intermittently. Open mics, day job, brunches, late nights, early mornings, weekends that feel like weekends, and hopefully some more writing soon.

Get what you want,

Paul

Astoria! A-A-A….Astoria!

Well, I’m pretty much all moved in.  My DVD collection is an issue that I’m going to resolve with albums.  It will kill their re-sell value, but I just don’t care — I don’t really want to go on Amazon and sell all my DVDs anyway.  I’ll keep my box sets as they are.

A few things I’ve learned since moving to New York:

• Many bars ‘buy back’ every third round, such as my favorite new place, The Quays.
• These are the bars you should frequent.
• Brunch is as awesome, and uniquely so, as TV tells you it is.
• The trains will occasionally just go express, leaving you to watch as they escape down the center track.
• Not everything you eat here is awesome.   But most of it is.

More as I learn.

The open mics have been very cool so far — it’s fun to bring my music to a different audience every night, and hopefully I’ll be setting up more shows soon.  If anyone has suggestions for a place I should fasttrack in my endeavor to hit all points, I’m open to suggestions!