blah ska blah

A quick reminder that DWS will be playing at the Vaudeville Mews tonight, doors at 5:00pm. We won't actually play until 7:30 at the earliest (I'd guess). Come see me forget the pre-chorus to "Goodbye" (odds are high despite Ginko Biloba supplements taken just before this entry). It'll be a pretty normal DWS set with the addition of a Moving Mikey song and a Slapstick cover that both Moving Mikey and the Mailbox Snatchers played. If you've read my personal band history blog from a couple months ago, you'd know that those are my previous bands. You knew that, right six visitors a day?

This seems like as good a time as any to talk about one of my favorite things. Ska! At some point in eighth grade, I was introduced to The Aquabats. It was at this very moment, my life diverged down a long, ladyless road. Sure, when you're in high school there'll be a couple of your ladyfriends at the ska show and you two will inevitably skank. It's high school and you're in a band... skanking should happen (at least oral skanking). If you're a socially-awkward guitarist with REALLY bad acne, it'll happen once and then in eight years you'll start a blog. Don't worry, the acne isn't quite as bad as it used to be... and you're fat. If you've seen the Less Than Jake, "evolution of a ska kid" t-shirts, you'll see a very real progression (as it is though, the Descendents' "evolution of man" t-shirt is my favorite "evolution of..." t-shirt). Unless you're Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, Big D & the Kids Table, etc., it's really not acceptable to play in a ska/punk band after high school... let alone, three years after you dropped out of community college, but I do and so what!?! While most of my friends began listening to more rock-oriented genres, leaving ska behind, I've began listening to those same genres, shuffled in with ska. I still enjoy most of the bands I dug that eighth grade year and on. This isn't normal, I suppose. Anyways, one of the reasons these ska tunes are still in rotation is my fondness of the energy in the music. A good ska/punk song is like four Mardi Gras, man! Having a bad day? Put on The Fury of the Aquabats and listen to Captain Hampton and the Midget Pirates! TURN THAT FROWN UPSIDE-DOWN! Another reason I dig that ska music, mang: I heart puns and ska is ripe with the worst puns possible. Imo, the best ska-name I've seen was The Skabortionists (Iowa's best ska/punk band, circa 2003). The limitless abilty to throw "ska" on the front of nearly any word beginning with the letter "a" is totally skawesome. Skalmost Heroes! Skanarachist Cookbook! Skaustralia! Skatonement! Skalan Skalda! So many options, IT'S SKAMAZING! Skanyhow, I'm 24 now... and I still listen to and play ska. I'm going to be single forever.

Billy's Best of 2008 (MUSIC)

#10
Artist: Girl Talk
Album: Feed the Animals
Label: Illegal Art
Favorite Track: 02. "Shut the Club Down"
Notes: I'm a big fan of the track featuring samples of Avril Lavigne. Srsly.


#09
Artist: Ra Ra Riot
Album: The Rhumb Line
Label: Barsuk
Favorite Track: 05. "Dying is Fine"
Notes: This is one of the only albums featuring stringed instruments (beyond guitar and bass) that I've enjoyed. A great tone to the whole album.

#08
Artist: The Knux
Album: Remind Me in 3 Days...
Label: Interscope
Favorite Track: 05. "Roxxanne"
Notes: This is exactly what all Hip-Hop should sound like. These dudes have a really cool mix of songs here, which keeps every track super fresh fresh ya'll... you don't stop?

#07
Artist: Department of Eagles
Album: In Ear Park
Label: Beggar's Group
Favorite Track: 02. "No One Does It"
Notes: Another album with a fantastic tone and seemingly limitless listenability.

#06
Artist: MGMT
Album: Oracular Spectacular
Label: Sony/Columbia Records
Favorite Track: 02. "Weekend Wars"
Notes: These fellas remind me of the record snagging hoodlums from High Fidelity. I want to hate them. I look at them and I know that I don't like them. Unfortunately, they make really good music...

#05
Artist: My Morning Jacket
Album: Evil Urges
Label: ATO Records
Favorite Track: 13. "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 2"
Notes: The range from "Highly Suspicious" to my favorite track is pretty great, yet all of these songs fit so well together. Jim James' voice is too perfect for their sound.

#04
Artist: Dr. Dog
Album: Fate
Label: Park the Van
Favorite Track: 04. "Army of Ancients"
Notes: Great, classic sounding tracks borrowing from previous generations' sound perfectly.

#03
Artist: TV on the Radio
Album: Dear Science
Label: Interscope
Favorite Track: 07. "Red Dress"
Notes: The horns were a great addition... a sexy great addition.


#02
Artist: Blitzen Trapper
Album: Furr
Label: Sub Pop
Favorite Track: 03. "Furr"
Notes: Can we get a blood test to confirm that Eric Earley wasn't switched with Jakob Dylan at birth?


#01
Artist: Fleet Foxes
Album: Fleet Foxes
Label: Sub Pop
Favorite Track: 03. "Ragged Wood"
Notes: An album for the times... just fantastic.

BACKWARDS CAPITAL H!

Come see my new band, (Backwards) Capital H. We're playing at the Mews (name drop?) next Sunday. We only play Sundays as we believe that while our music may not be in any way religious, it is epic in ways that are void of reason (see: religious). Are you a religious person? I'm sorry you don't have the common sense and strength of character that I acquired by age twelve. You can still come and put your hands in the air, like you just don't care about science (let me hear you say "HEY!" "ZEUS!"). Our drummer recently purchased a china symbol... made in China. It cost quite a bit more than the ones you'll find at Guitar Center (other instruments gravitate to the guitary center of chain musical equipment sales). Thanks to his purchase we are now 43% more loud, which translates to a net rock profit of 3.2 million dollars a year. This money will all go to funding research into quenching my stomach-lust for cookies. Did I mention there's also a cute lady in our band? So... you probably want to have an excuse to look at her for twenty five minutes. HANDS OFF THOUGH! She's spoken for. Our band has entered into an agreement that we can only date one another, especially if we become addicted to coke (influences? Fleetwood Mac). We wrote a song we call, "Hardwood Mac." It's a tale of a little girl named Stevie... who grew up to be the first professional female basketball player when drafted by the 1967 New York Knicks. Sadly, she chose music over basketball (like SHAQ) and has probably regretted it ever since (like SHAQ). Rounding out our band is leading synth sensation, Abercrombie Rick. He would describe our sound as "post-art." He's pretty cool. I hate him. Anyways, it's the late show so persons under age 21 and without a good fake ID will have to go do drugs or other illegal activity whilst us adults get responsibly crunk. Sorry! After the show, we're all meeting at Abercrombie Rick's house for a LFO Dance Party. See you there!

Coming soon?

Canon in D Remix (Remix)

I hope for your sake that you're ahead of the curve (me... I'm the curve) and are well aware of the unholy awesomeness of Ronald Jenkees. BEHOLD:

Ummmmm, wtf. It's like Harry Carry met Timberland; they get sexy and had a man-love child prodigy with mild Downs Syndrome. I'm listening to his album right now and will probably be listening to it all day because it is entrancing. (I'm currently tranced.) As a white male, I only tend to bob my head when looking at my tax forms (amirite all Black comedians!?!) A side-effect of being tranced appears to be head-bobbing. Has anybody else suffered these same symptoms? Let me know... we may have a class action lawsuit on our hands, here: Ronald Jenkees v. Mind Slaves of Ronald Jenkees. Anyhow, GET INTO IT!

I've played in bands off and on since sophomore year of high school. My first band ended up named "Out the Door" (I was dropped off at Kyle's house and didn't arrange for a ride home, much to the annoyance of Kyle and Steve, who didn't want to take me home. Something to the effect of "you just go out the door without thinking!" was said and the band was named). We played one show; a three song set that included a cover of the Ventures' "Pipeline" and two original songs, "My Velcro" and "JB Hates Ska." I then played solo for the first time when I sang another original, "Happy Belated Birthday (You're Retarded)." This solo moment spawned my acoustic solo project, Billy Confessional which lasted throughout high school; my one hit song being "Fat Gurl Likes the Pie." It was and still is atrocious. Before all of this, my buddies formed a ska/punk outfit in late 1999 named Driving While Stupid (after their second guitarist, a sterotypically bad Asian driver). After dwelling on the failure of OtD for a while, I formed my own ska/punk band, The Mailbox Snatchers. We played quite a few shows over a couple of years (opening for bands like The Slackers and Big D & the Kids Table, both in Iowa City) before fading into local band obscurity. DWS trudged along during this time, only once interrupted by aspirations of taking things seriously (see: The Contingency), but that didn't really work out (see: DWS's first full length "Contingencies Never Work"). After Mailbox, I was bandless for sometime. I recorded bass for an Eric and the Floaters split album with the Argos (even writing the bass line to "Unicron vs. Death Star") while hanging around sometime around 2003.
Fast forward a bit, Little Billy and the Naughty Thoughts formed as my first band completely sans ska. We played the GrandView College Talent Show, placed second and won $500. This remains the only money I've ever made from music. Meanwhile, DWS continuef with an evolving cast of members.
>>FORWARD>> I moved to Iowa City just before 2005, effectively ending my stay in the music scene. (It was around this time that DWS "broke up" for the first time.) After my then-girlfriend left me and I dropped out of school, there wasn't much holding me in the IC aside from my job. Shortly after I was fired from that job (Spring of 2006), I moved back to Des Moines and started jamming with my buddy Tony. This led to a new ska/punk project named Moving Mikey (after a game on Nick Arcade - we ran through many Mike O'Malley references before finally settling on another Nickeloden referemce). That lasted through two shows (including a trip to Wisconsin for Skappleton!) over about a years' time. (Meanwhile, DWS played a couple of reunion shows). After MM, Tony and I kept jamming, writing songs for a more agressive punk band named Banzai! Banzai!, but eventually his fiance became increasingly annoying (at least that's how I felt) and Tony couldn't hang out with me anymore because I didn't like her. That was and is still dumb.
>>FORWARD>> More time passes, it's 2008, and I'm hanging out with some of the dudes I used to hang out with before I moved to Iowa City. ( I still haven't dated a lady since the IC.) I am bored as are these dudes, some of whom were in Driving While Stupid... a band that I was still to this point never a member of. We started talking about playing some tunes, but nothing materialized until all of the sudden, about a month ago, DWS is back together and I'm playing guitar (about one month after I finally sold my amp). We've practiced a couple of times, not too much rust on their end, and in a couple of weeks:
Be there if you like... I'm not psyched at all about the venue and don't see mself hanging around, but it should be a good time while I'm there. We can chieng out afterwards! YEY!


Ronald Jenkees.

... calmer than you are.

Alas, my job search has not yet netted me a new job... the hunt continues tomorrow as I return an application to Sticks, where Willy T. suggested I might sand and/or burn things. Sounds fun? Sounds like a day job... which I need. I CAN'T AFFORD COMICS FOR THE SECOND WEEK IN A ROW!!! Bigger problem: I may not be able to afford to fill my gas tank again 'til next Friday (nine days away...). Here's hoping for some fantastic gas milage this week! Maybe some good news will come out of my unemployment phone conference tomorrow morning? I was recently fired from the hotel I had worked at for the last ten months after being told time and time again throughout that entire span that I would be receiving a promotion. The letting-go-of-Billy took place after I wrote a note to the night auditor, suggesting that he get in check with reality and stop being a dumbass. I didn't use such words and had the backing of my co-workers and manager (as he told me I was "right") in doing this... Anyhow, I performed my job to the standards that were required of me and was let go because they did not want to give me a raise (as we would be entering the slow-season at the hotel). Etc. etc. etc. It should be a nice, easy conversation resulting in me getting a couple of checks that I could really use. Unless I have my kind of luck... then it'll at least be a common refrain. I'm used to things not working out... it happens A LOT.

I got paid to listen to Rudy Guiliani and Sarah Palin's speeches tonight (about $12). Both were despicable. I prefer Daniel "Rudy" Rudiger to Rudy 911. Who wasn't rooting for Rudy to get in the game, with his family and good buddy (Jon Favreau) there watching!?! Enthralling stuff! Much better than twisted rhetoric and cheap shots fed to a crowd of obviously disenfranchised husbands and their hockey-wives. Ugh. How about poor Levi... I can't wait for this election to end and that guy to get a TV show. I got a good chuckle every time the camera cut to him with his baby mama at his side. Fantastic stuff. I was very unimpressed with Sarah Palin's speech. She carried herself well enough, but slamming Barack Obama in front of a conservative crowd is about as easy of a setting as she'll see these next couple months. I cannot wait for the Biden/Palin debate... or the Obama/McCain debate for that matter. Both should prove very confirming in my belief that the Obama/Biden ticket looks great for our future.

I had written some more here... but Blogger didn't like it. Basically, I was just saying that the two new Matt Embree albums (Love You Moon "Waxwane" & The Sound of Animals Fighting "The Ocean and the Sun") are both excellent. I also had some praise for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog; the soundtrack to which, just became available two nights ago on iTunes. Maybe I'll rewrite my thoughts on these things later on? It's super exhausting to write something and have it deleted though, so I'm out for the evening. Adieu.