The Video is here, the video is here! Heh, kinda like Paul Revere when riding for America and announcing the red-coats. Only this isn’t about a dangerous attack. The Video for All The Things, the studio version style for like say MTV2 or VH1 (does VH1 need a VH2?), is now available for viewing in the Clubhouse. If you’re a registered member, shoot on in and check it out. Not a member? No problem, just sign up, ITS FREE!

Midway through the month and I’m still knee-deep in Christmas past songs. Almost done with those, then its on to Christmas present, after than Christmas future. Meanwhile, back in reality land… The T-Shirt design is done and I’m currently working on finding a great place to get them replicated. Next stop, the Practical Insanity Tour Poster.

The band is about to start major prep time for the tour. The live rig for the drummer has been setup and it’s off we go. Kinda fun being a technological band. It will certainly enhance the live show.

Just want to take a moment to say that I hope everyone in New Orleans is going to be able to start again.

Things are moving along, or at least so I’m told. First I’d like to say thank you to everyone that showed up at the Lowe’s Music anniversary to see the first show with the new band backing me up. Colin, Josh, and Henrick did a fantastic job considering that we had all of 2 rehearsals. From the audience reaction I think we’re going to do well once we hit the road later this year. Speaking of that, the booking agent assures me that he almost has the first leg of the Practical Insanity tour happening. I’ll post dates just as soon as I get them.

In the meantime I’m working on the Christmas album that I’ve spoke of before. So far I have the music to several songs all laid out. As soon as I get them all laid out, I’ll be singing my ass off later this month.

Movie Pick of the Week: The Constant Gardener. Where do I begin with this? To start, in terms of how this movie is laid out – it has a confusing start. It jumps around in time without setting up anything. So for a while it’s confusing and annoying. Once it stops jumping all over the place in time, it then starts jumping on screen. The style of filming was similar to The Bourne Supremecy. I think this style is great for action films. But The Constant Gardener is NOT an action film, thus this shooting style is out of place and doesn’t help propel this movie. Despite these problems, the story is quite good once it gets past the timeline issues. In a nutshell it’s about major Drug companies doing illegal things at the expense of a third world nation. Based on a change in my life over health lifestyle, to me this isn’t so unbelieveable. In fact, I bet its closer to the truth than most people would be willing to admit. If you can stomach the camera-work, and can get past the confusing beginning, this is a movie worth watching. If anything it can shed light on what corporations are allowed to do when they have too much too money.

I have Practical Insanity in my hands. It’s looking absolutely fantastic! Not to mention it sounds damn good too. I’ve already sent off a bunch of copies to CD Baby, so it should be available there within the week. I’ve already had it in the wings for iTunes as well, still awaiting for news on when it will show up there. I will certainly post it here when it happens. If you absolutely need to get it sooner than soon and want it personally signed by me, you can mail me a check or money order for $15 to:

On Records
3727 W. Magnolia Blvd #459
Burbank CA 91505

I will send you an autographed copy, just as soon as your check clears. Money orders will go out the same day I receive the order in my hands. Please allow time for the order to get to me, then back to you via first class mail. Shipping and Handling is included in the $15.

The Booking Agent says that the feelers are already out and about for the beginning of the tour. No dates have been set just yet, but I believe the band and I will be hitting the road in October, at least that’s what I’m told. Stay tuned as I’ll be adding those dates here just as soon as the information hits my ears.

Movie Pick of the Week: Four Brothers. In a word – Intense. I didn’t really know what to expect heading into this movie. The gist I got prior to seeing it was a family of orphans looking for who killed their mother. Well, that’s actually an accurate description of the premise. But what I didn’t expect was the quality of the story. It was really captivating. There were a lot of little twists and turns that took me on a complete roller coaster ride. What I really liked about it was that I felt like I got to know the characters, yet I never quite knew what to expect in how they’d act in each situation. Mark Wahlberg definitely pulls a good performance out on this one. If you can stomach some heavy violence and some strong words then I think you’ll really get a kick out of this movie. I recommend it.

Whoa, I must have hit a time warp. I haven’t updated for just over two weeks. But then I hope I have a good excuse. I was on vacation for past two weeks.

I’ll keep it brief for now.

The CD’s of Practical Insanity should be back from the printer tomorrow or Friday. Woo Hoo! I’ll be sending out an e-mail to all interested parties about them getting their copy once I have the little suckers in my hands.

Also, I officially have a booking agent. His name is Steve Maris, from Maris Agency. You can request a tour date via the contact page, it will send an e-mail right to him. You can also call him at the number listed on the contact page.

Have a great day!

Ah, what a Monday morning. Nothing like getting up and being lazy.

Yeah, right. Ok, the CD Practical Insanity is off to the printer as of today! That’s right kiddies, the new CD is finally seeing the light of retail ready to sell day. As well, the video for All The Things and the new CD have been shipped off to iTunes music store as well. I will post the information about it’s launch date as soon as I hear about it.

If you’ve been following my poker playing antics, I won a satellite poker tourney last friday. It gave a me seat in a $13k winner take all tourney later that night. Well, I made it to the final two tables, but ended up going out due to being short stacked. At least I got the seat and didn’t have to do a rebuy like most of the other players.

Movie Pick of the Week: Fantastic Four. This is a fun movie. Not really a great story involved as it’s the first in what will probably be several of this series. But it sets up the series quite well. My favorite character is the Human Torch. He’s the most fun to watch. The others are good too. The special effects are great. I think once they get past the setup which happened in this movie, then hollywood can step up the story and really make this fly. I imagine if they get the story to match the level of Spiderman, then the Fantastic Four will be awesome. I recommend seeing this film.

Last friday I got a great phone call. It was from a booking agent who has decided he wants to get me out on the road! So, here’s the rundown so far…

The CD master of “Practical Insanity” has been completed and made. The artwork has been finalized and is being fitted into the templates I’ve received from Groovehouse – the company I’ve decided to use for duplication thanks to a conversation with Derek Sivers of CD Baby. My main issues for choosing them: Direct to Glass master transfer, so the audio should sound better. And Eco-friendly printing. Plus it doesn’t hurt that they are priced slightly better than most competitors.

I’m excited to finally be taking the music on the road and around the U.S. and hopefully to Europe in the future! Still working out travel, band members, radio and PR, but things are coming together. YEAH!

Also last friday I played in a poker tournament. My 3rd ever and I placed 11th. Not bad for just 5-6 months of playing, especially considering the caliber of players in Los Angeles. I missed the final table by making a major mistake on my last hand. Believe me, I won’t be doing that again. My goal for the next tourney is to make the final table! If this music thing doesn’t pan out, maybe I can become a professional poker player :-).

Have a great week!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Lots and lots of phone work going on, getting things together to start the “Practical Insanity” campaign. In the meantime I wanted to make you aware of something cool. Have you heard of Podcasting? It’s one of the new net rages where you can download a broadcast in mp3 format then transfer it to your MP3 player, such as the iPod – for which the term was coined after. The reason I mention it is this, I’ve just finished the music for particular Podcast known as “The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd”. It’s a rather fun Podcast that is based on the old fashioned serial radio show style. Its funny, educational, and different from just about any Podcast out there. Each episode is about 5 minutes long and you can listen to any of them freely at the website. Or you can now use the new version of iTunes software (v4.9) to subscribe to the Podcast, yes its still free.

I’m finishing up with the master disc for “Practical Insanity” and finalizing the artwork today. Getting it all together so that I can send it off to be duplicated in the next couple of weeks.

Movie Pick of the Week: War of the Worlds. This is an odd summer blockbuster. First, I think I know why Tom Cruise has gone off the deep end in all the recent interviews. I think the character from War of the Worlds stuck with him and he hasn’t shaken the role yet. Storywise this movie seems like a string of events with no rhyme or reason. But then if the world was actually being attacked by a methodical group of aliens I guess this would be how you’d go about attempting to survive. Initially it took me a little while to get into the story, in fact for me it didn’t start to flow until the first alien hit the screen. Once that happened it was a roller-coaster ride all the way to the end. I was mezmerized from that point on. That is until just before the end of the film where I was begining to wonder – is this gonna end? I think Spielberg must have been listening as the movie ended roughly a few mintues after that. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, and there was one surprise that made me think – Lame! The special effects were pretty amazing, especially considering I never thought about them. The weirdest thing about the movie is the fact that its not filmed in widescreen/cinemascope outside of that, the movie was worth the price of admission and I’d recommend going.

Quietly working on new material while I’m waiting to hear back from some people on the possible touring and promotion of “Practical Insanity”. In the meantime I’ve been plotting out my Christmas CD concept and even working on demos for the next non-holiday release called tentatively titled “Dirty White Slave”. Yes, there is a story behind that title, but I’ll hold off on saying anything about until much closer to the actual release date. Expect “Practical Insanity” sometime in the near future.

Another thing I’m excited about is getting into NACA and APCA. I’ve already got one showcase coming up in November and I’m submitting for more this fall through both organizations. At the very least I’ll be making the rounds at college/university campuses later this year and into 2006.

***** (The area between stars constitues an update to the news after it was posted)
I’ve come across a nifty new little site called Audioscrobbler.com I have absolutely no idea what the word scrobbler means, but here’s the idea behind the site. It’s like a cross of Friendster/Myspace and iTunes. You create a little profile, download a small application (plug-in for the music player you use), then proceed to play what music you listen to on your favorite music player on your computer. It keeps track of what you listen to then sends that information to your profile. What happens is you can then find out what your friends listen to, or discover new bands by finding out what other listeners listen to. It will even suggest artists to check out.

I just downloaded this and have been trying it out. I recommend it and hope you’ll play some of my tunes while you are using it.
******

Movie Pick of the Week: Batman Begins. Let me preface by saying that I’m not a huge fan of the Batman series. I always felt that they never picked a great ‘Batman’, and they were never quite edgy enough. Hell some of them were downright dopey. So, I got to attend a special midnight showing of Batman Begins on Tuesday night in IMAX. In a word: WOW. I think they’ve finally stumbled onto a great concept for Batman. Christian Bale made for a great Bruce Wayne/Batman. Liam Neeson was effective as a villain. Michael Cain whom I thought had quite acting was a good Alfred. Katie Holmes, despite her recent publicity stunt with Tom Cruise, wasn’t believable as a prosecuting attourney. And a long lost Rutger Hauer was there, but didn’t seem to make a super effective impact as a kniving CEO. Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman played characters a little of nature but they were good. I felt that overall the story worked out quite well. There were a couple of hokey moments but for the most part it was captivating. The special effects were cool. And Gotham really became a city that felt like Gotham. I’m now a Batman fan, provided they can keep up the level of quality they introduced in this one. I’d recommend this one. And if you get the chance, see it in IMAX.