Month: March 2005

Coming around the final bend of March. There’s quite a few entries in the Contest from the Clubhouse. Good luck to everyone that has entered. I’ll announce the winner on April 1st. Along side that winner I’ll be posting the contest for April and you can enter all over again.

I’m also coming up on the final few songs that have been being converted to the new format for our live show. It’s a great feeling to finally nearing the finish line on that. Also along those lines, I’m nearly finished with the music bits for the licensing stuff I had mentioned before. I feel like when I get it done, I’ll be able to quit music and move on to another profession. Doh, I’m kidding – poor attempt at pre-April-fool’s humor.

The live show has really come together. The show at the Knitting Factory was highly impressive not only for the audience for us as a band as well. It feels like everything is finally in the right place and we’re going to start kicking some major musical ass. Now if I can just get that pesky film crew to stop following me around. Oh, wait, that’s me thinking like I’m famous already. Speaking of film crews… I’ve put it upon the director of the All The Things video to re-tweak it. I know you’ve not had a chance to see it yet, due time, due time. But I feel the song will be better suited if we manipulate the image and give it a different look. So it’s back to the computer editing and time to hit After Effects. So when we do release the CD/DVD you’ll get the initial version and the MTV version in the package. I swear it’ll be cool.

To further push the film thing, here’s my Movie Pick of the Week: Beauty Shop. Yes, I know you’re shaking your head. What the hell is a white boy from the big apple and Utah ‘burbs doing going to see that. Well, I have to tell you it was funny. I never did see Barber Shop, I didn’t get it then, but I do know. I imagine that Beauty Shop is the exact same movie. Queen Latifah did a fine job, but the real standouts here were the supporting cast who include: Alicia Silverstone, doing a great southern accent, Kevin Bacon – playing a retarded hair dresser, and two surprises in Djimon Hounsou and Paige Hurd. Some of the laughs are pretty cheesy and obviously there strictly for the slapstick. While most of the other parts are quite natural. There are a few breakout moments like when the “white” girl finally gains acceptance and the daughter plays her piano solo. This is a fun movie and I recommend seeing it.

Getting some radio play. Starting this weekend I’ll be getting airplay on Music Highway with Sheena Metal and WPMD’s UNsigned Music Show with Mike Stark http://wpmd.org. Sheena will be playing the song Age from A Natural Leap Forward, Tee-m from WPMD hasn’t informed me as to which song he’ll be playing, but hey, tune in and request more.

The Knitting Factory show was great! We had a great time and the response from the crowd was awesome. I’ve even got pictures and I’ll be checking out the video in the next few days. The new technology we’ve been so feverishly working on has come through with flying colors and it showed. The next step is to put all our stuff on the laptop and just play air guitar and lipsync (just kidding).

If you’re on Rhapsody, my CD “A Natural Leap Forward” has finally made it onto their network. Long after it’s launch on iTunes. Do an artist a favor, go stream some songs from Rhapsody.

It’s a killer day. I hope you have a killer weekend. Well, at least a really fun weekend. Go color an egg or eat some great food. It’s Easter and all.

Jody

Been a busy little bee for the past couple of weeks. I got called upon to do a bunch of audio editing – in addition to the self imposed stuff I’ve been doing. Now I’m mastering audio for a new book coming soon on Drum Loops. I’ve also finished up some audio editing for a financial course. Now it’s back to my regular self imposed editing as I’m almost finished with making my licensing library.

I did play a show in Huntington Beach a week ago friday. I played in a songwriters in the round. I shared the stage with Warren Sellars, James Grey, and Dee Biggs. It was an interesting evening. I did what I could do to keep up with these songwriting heavyweights. All of whom who’ve had cuts on some major records it seems. In the end I apparently woke the crowd up and stole the show. Heck I even got a great compliment from Warren, on stage and in front of the whole crowd. That was cool. James Grey talked to me after the show and has asked if I’d play some other venues on his bills. So expect to see more of me in the O.C.

Another cool thing was I was approached by and Artist in an earlier round who proceeded to tell me he never wanted to be on the same stage with me at the same time. He felt I was “too good”. A rather nice compliment. Overall the evening was a success and I enjoyed my time there at Martini Blues.

I’ve also been toying with the concept of giving the option for HTML e-mails to those signed up on my e-mail list, however, I’m not sure I’ll go through with it just yet. It’s an involved process and I don’t want to use an outside company as I value your information. In fact, I’ve just been upgraded to an SPF account on my e-mails at my domain. Meaning you can authenticate that I actually sent you an e-mail, the spam stops here.

Movie Pick of the Week: The Upside of Anger & Robots. I’ll be brief, I know it’s a Monday morning. First, The Upside of Anger is an outrageously good movie. I’d put it up on par with something along the lines of Ordinary People. Its a movie about life and how we as people deal with it when shit goes wrong. The two main characters are played by Kevin Costner and Joan Allen. Awesome performance. Unfortunately I doubt it will do well at the box-office as it has no cars blowing up. On to Robots… Now, I got the chance to see this in IMAX. Visually this movie is astounding along the levels of The Incredibles. Storywise, this movie falls a little flat. There’s tons of gags, and a hint of something heartfelt, but it really failed to pull me in. It was enjoyable for the references to Star Wars, and other movies and did have some touching moments but they were kinda few and far between.

Jody