29.11.03

"It hasn't changed at all, son!"

Last night, at a hotel in lower Manhattan, I met the man who influenced me to pick up a bass guitar when I FIRST met him 12 years ago. It's no secret here who this person is, but needless to say he was a total gentleman who was funny and sweet. This brief conversation totally justified my musical existance. We discussed Hypefactor, bass playing and Gibson Thunderbirds. When he asked for a CD, I was floored. Kudos go to Irene (for giving me the last copy of Distracted Lover we had in the house, so I didnt have to rip down my framed copy), G (for coming along so I didn't look like a stalker), and B (tipping me off about the DJ set). It gets better as said bass hero is performing tonight here in NYC.

What a great moment. Thanks, Hooky!

Meanwhile, lyrics are bring revised and honed for HF2. I've been taking advantage of free moments during the Turkey break to focus on the written word. Yesterday, I shot some lyrics over to B and he came back with some positive feedback. Jazzed, by that, I began arranging what is now called OUR FAITH (title to change, though I hated calling it BITTER PARTY OF ONE). I have a decent intro and verse, so this morning I'll work on the choruses before being beaten by a 5 year old AGAIN (no complaints though!).

F



23.11.03

"Ill be over in a half hour"

I write this with a headache a mile wide, so bear with me. With Irene off on a girls night (which I'm told was quite hilarious), I made my way back to the studio to with the intention to remix Saintface and work on a song Brandt's had cooking for quite a while now called BITTER PARTY OF ONE (That title won't last, I promise). However, Ash decided he had to buy his cats gourmet dried fish, so he wasn't going to make, thus that meant no remixing as he had the Face parts. Rrrrr. Thus, we decided to work on the new song..

It took Brandt FOREVER to load this song and all the parts up and I was bored out of my freakin' mind. When he did get the song up, I have to admit I wasnt nearly as pleased with the track as I was when I heard it many weeks back. So a lot of deconstructing went on. The first thing to go were Brandt's strings, which sounded way the hell too much like TKK. Brandt let his Wax Trax fascination get the best of him with this song. I had played some bass awhile back which I thought blew, so I spent a lot of time writing new parts. This took a long time, but I was able to write basslines for the verses and choruses, though the chourses went through a few revisions as the day went on.

At some point during all this, Brandt received a phone call from Ash, saying he was coming by "in a half hour" to drop off the remix parts and I received a phone call from my old pal Jamie Duffy (on tour doing sound for Saves The Day) saying he also was coming by "in a half hour". Its interesting to see what "in a half hour" means for these guys as they didnt show until many half hours later, and hours apart from each other.

Anyway, there was no way Jamie was going to hang out with us and not play, so after he spent 3 hours Instant Messaging people, we put a guitar in his hand and DAMN did he take this new track to the next level. He played the most UN-Jamie like guitars I have ever heard (I mean this in a good way). He played some 12 string as well as some E-bow and really added some sexiness to the track. I just left him and Brandt alone to make this track happen. Now the song went from Wax Traxy to sounding like Soda Stereo. This is good. Damn good.

Then it became the industrial This Is Your Life as the three of us had a big dinner discussing everything under the sun about Jamie's and my past in the world of machine rock (as we call it now). Some funny stories were told and I think Brandt got a kick out of hearing a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that has happened to us over the years.

And yes, Jamie confirmed the atrocity that was the aggression hotel destruction incident. Brandt was shocked that that story was NOT exaggerated.

Then it was drinks long into the evening at KGB bar, which was a good choice as the drinks are strong and priced reasonably and the place isnt overcrowded. Like Russia. I think.

All in all, a fun evening. Thanks, Kid!

F

21.11.03

DISCO!

The Face made their Knitting Factory Debut last night for an early show opening for someone called My Favorite (who have a bit of a following, I'm told). Well, I'm happy to report that Saintface was in excellent form and played a very "hyper" (Irene's word) and "Spirited" (G's word) set. As a musician who knows the band members well, I could tell that they were having a VERY fun time on there. The music was tight, the band was loose. That's how it should be. Plus, they closed with an oldie called YOU BELONG TO ME, which confirms my suspicion that it's popping up on the album. Right, Peter?

I would like to add that Saintface have fallen into an old aggression trap. With the aggression, every gig was "the last gig ever" and we'd play a month later. Saintface's gimmick is "last gig of the year" and they play a month later. December 29th will be their third last gig of the year I think. Love it.

And yes, Peter, that was me who yelled "Disco". Sorry. I wouldn't do that if they weren't my favorite band.

Had a nice round of drinks after with my girl, G, brandt and Peter. Good times.

F

20.11.03

EXIT STRATEGIES

I miss you as well. But here I am.

Pigface, featuring Jared, came into town the other night. It was dilemma for me as we had tix for the Twilight Singers, who I dearly love, but I wanted to see Jared. Irene and I had a great sushi dinner with Jared, who I am always happy to see and have fun with. That was the highlight for sure. As for the gig, the crowd was dead, the venue blows and quite frankly, I feel like Pigface, other than as a promotional tour for Jared/Chemlab, is a dead topic at this point. Touring so soon after the last tour and touring the same market behind KMFDM (who I skipped intentionally when I found out they weren't playing Pig songs) was a huge mistake. Jared is a sole frontman and better off on his own and hopefully this tour at least gets people interested in Chemlab. I was invited to get up and sing CODIENE GLUE AND YOU with Jared (who treats me like a superstar, thanks), but legendary tampon jingle writer Siebold tried to boot me, obviously not paying attention to the fact that I was invited up. Kids stormed the stage, not helping with the confusion either, so eventually, I just sorta walked off the stage cause it was going nowhere. Maybe it was because the aggression was so much better than Douche Dept. when we opened for them. Just saying. And Curse Mckay? Thanks for the water. Dick.

Honestly, between us, I was nervous about going up, as this has been my scene since I was 18. Plus, I hadn’t been onstage in awhile. I was onstage maybe 2 minutes, tops. Irene and Matt were very protective of me post-leaving the stage as I guess I looked a bit frazzled. So my appreciation goes out to them. So while I’m thinking it was a humiliating experience, kids from the gig have been E-mailing me they loved the chaos. Go figure.

Anyway, post gig vibes were low, but thanks to a well-placed Text message from Mr. G, I was able to run down very quickly to catch the last hour of the Twilight Singers. Greg Dulli, fat and drunk, sang the new Outkast song and then played a bunch of Afghan Whigs songs. He was a mess. He talked non-stop. He doesn’t seem long for this world. I’m happy I saw this. I went to bed a happy boy.

The next night was back to the studio for some HF loving. THEY’VE JUST, the first song written for the new album, finally got the attention it deserved and is now a sweet, atmospheric song. Lotta soul to this one. Very pleased with it. 9 songs now for HF2.

Speaking of HF2: the new tentative album titles is EXIT STRATEGIES. You can figure that out on your own.

Last night, Irene found a great Vietnamese bistro for us to find solace in during a massive rainstorm before I headed over to the Coral Room to meet Ash and Brandt for the free Telfon Tel Aviv gig. This gig was nothing sort of EXCELLENT and the band impressed us with their ability to use live instruments instead of solely relying on a computer. Top notch, excellent music. Then I ran into Mike Burnlab, who did the artwork for the new Chemlab record and is a really good guy, so that was a nice surprise.

The evening ended at the Gramercy where Ash, Brandt and I had a very productive and positive discussion about all our different musical adventures. I left this summit quite jazzed and quite optimistic for the upcoming material. I wish everyone I worked with in music was as dedicated as these two (and Robinowitz).

Saintface tonight. More then.

F

17.11.03

JACKIE LAND!

I am going to be in some deep shit with this...

Jackie Chan in talks with government to construct a Jackie Chan village in Hong Kong over the next ten years
by Wu Chi Ming
2003.11.17

Jackie Chan took interviews with a few Japanese newspapers the other day, and revealed plans to cooperate with the Hong Kong government to construct a village (the Jackie village!) in ten years time.  The village could have a Jackie Chan museum and a movie themed park.

Jackie Chan's "Shanghai Knights" opened the day before yesterday in Japan.  But because he was hard at work on "New Police Story, Jackie was unable to promote the movie in person.  But he still attracted a large number of Japanese media who arrived in Hong Kong to interview him.  He accepted interviews from "Sports Daily" and "Sankei Sports" and disclosed his planned construction of the Jackie village in Hong Kong.  Each part of the facility [would be world class.]  Jackie Chan said, "...I plan a Jackie village!  Besides having a movie themed park, we could have a theater, a [sports area?] and a Jackie museum.

Jackie had originally had this idea on his mind for several years.  He said, "Although Jackie Village is still in the planning stage, there has already been four or five meetings with the Hong Kong government.  The final plan isn't in cement yet, and I can't disclose details.  It was a secret!  There are still a lot of plans for the project.  Moreover, from the beginning until now it's been about two or three years.  I believe in order to complete the project it would take ten years!"  A few years ago there were rumors of plans to construct a Jackie Chan museum in Yokohama, but the plan was stopped.  Now Jackie has regained hope.

http://www.the-sun.com.hk/channels/ent/20031117/img/c21117_big.jpg

12.11.03

FUCK YOUR PHONE!

Sorry, been buried. But here I am for your stalking pleasure.

Chemlab is literally consuming my life. This is not a bad thing. Tons of work, E-mails flooding in and lots of new interest in my musical world from the kids. The Chemlab message boards are a lot of fun so far. Hopefully, no jackasses will go and ruin it. Thanks to this new exposure, a few aggression/HF cd's are being bought up and the talk of the chat boards is the new Chemlab "MACHINE AGE" EP. Jared is out on the road with Pigface now selling it as well as the new T-shirts (can't wait to strap one of those on!). Finally, my copies of the EP arrived today thanks to the very nice Mike at Invisible and it sounds super. I think for a limited edition tour only item, this is the perverbial bomb, as they say. I'm not 100% happy with the way my artwork was printed, but I have little to nothing to complain about. Its the first official Chem-release in years and I got to be a part of it. Now, onwards to Oxidizer in January...and beyond.

Hypefactor is no less busy. Tackling the song THEYVE JUST, now which has gone from moody acoustical thing to mini-Cure epic. Love what this is turning into. Its the last song to be developed before we being tracking drums. LOTS of inter-corp discussion about the drums, etc. Thats a new challenge for us as we have never directly recorded live drums for one of our projects before. It will certainly be educational. Ash has laid some of the groundwork for this with the Cobra's, but I think we're gonna do some really great stuff in the next few weeks. Robin's ready for this. I know she will come through big time. Also, Brandt has updated the news section of the site, so check that our and LEARN, asap!

Meanwhile, the aggression (remember them) have been informed by the label that the THESE MILLION NIGHTS EP is on the schedule for early 04 (to capitalize on the chemlab association, I'm sure), so I've started prepping the art for it. We're not sure if it's going to be in a slim jewel case (like DEVIATIONS), which is my preference, or in a regular CD5 case, so as soon as I know, I can go full out on the art. the cover is ready. I'm looking forward to getting back into that world for a bit. I think the label has a few of their artists doing some remixes for this, so we might end up with maybe TEN remixes on this mother. Quite the bang for the buck.

And no, i will not comment on Paris Hilton. Now back to Cerati

F



7.11.03

Some Velvet Morning When I Blog

Out of touch, but a little bit of time, so here I am...

Took a quick post-24 runner over to the studio the other night to make some cosmetic changes to SOLAR (yes, the real title), 1956 (yes, the real title), and EXIST (yes, real title). When listening to the versions that came out from Saturday's awesome session, I realized a few tweaks needed to be made. EXIST in particular, needed a bit of a change in the intro as the post-saturday one, as S.O. pointed out, sounded exactly like a certain song by a British artist of some note. I went and got the song in question and sure enough, she was right on. It was a minor tweak, but worth it.

SOLAR, the album closer, had a bit too much Hookbass in it, so to keep the impact of that sound fresh in the song, I took stuff I had written for the verses out. There's a great ending to this song, which could be compared to The Cure in their prime. To flesh this section out, B played some sweet piano over it.

I was only in the studio for a few hours, but they were hours well spent.

Now we are trying to formulate a gameplan for the next stage, meaning, its time for the live drums for the first 7 or so songs. Also on the agenda will be to write a track in the rehearsal space with the full band. I had wanted Peter Saintface to get on on this part, but he is neck-deep in the 'Face record, and we're gonna have to be patient while he does his thing there. If I didn't want that Saintface record so badly, I might be upset ;-)

While all THIS is going on, the Chemlab machine is in full swing. The new mixes came in from Jared and Joolz and I'm pleasantly surprised that they were able to take a Chemlab album and mix it to sound even MORE like Chemlab. I wish I had been there, but my comments, as always, are nitpicky. Meanwhile, the new website, complete with message board, is now functioning and I find myself posting left and right and innundated with instant messages about the album, the ep, and anything else related to it. The kids are jazzed for this album and I'm confident it will deliver. Meanwhile, Jared is getting the EP ready in Chicago and I myself am dying to see and hear the final result. I worked on 4 of the 6 tracks and did the artwork for it. It's the first thing kids are going to hear from the new Lab and I am (understandably) excited and paranoid at the same time.

The fan who wrote from Germany wrote to tell me that Tinman wrote him back and he has ordered his aggression CD's. Good! Now watch, he'll fucking hate it...

F

2.11.03

Creation Phase

For the first time in weeks, I made it down to the studio to get back to work on HF2. I had so much energy because I had been itching to get back into it. Hit the ground running and finally did the long awaited arrangement on 1956, which is now a lean mean fighting machine. Of the course of two hours, every time Brandt and I would say "it's done" and play it back, we'd get a new arrangement idea. We shaved a minute and a half off of it, and I'm loving it. Then B played me the new parts to TWO BASSES that they did while I was away and I was really into and was double pleased I didn't have to change a thing in the song. They've really smoothed that tune out and made the two very different parts appear to be seemless. Awesome work.

My next task was to tackle the new intro to EXIST because the newest version B sent me seemed messy. He has so many cool parts in it that it became just a matter of giving them room to shine in the intro. Quick work. I then extended the bridge Robin and Ash wrote for the song, simply because it deserved more ear time and is quite possibly the best 20-30 seconds of the album. Nuff said.

Then, as a nice surprise, Robin and Ash appeared and the band was in full swing. We first just reviewed the songs as everyone had notes (well, ash actually had writtern notes) and comments on the new mixes. Everyone is almost on the same page and even where we're note on the same page, we're at least in the same chapter of the book and quite close. Which is really good. Once we were done reviewing the tracks and set a gameplan for the day, we listened to some of our recent non HF work (i.e. Chemlab and Ass Cobra) and hammered out some internal MOG politics, which is wack, but has to be done sometimes. However, I'm happy to report I'm digging the Cobra.

Then we got back to the problematic SOLAR, which is less and less problematic finally. Robin recorded some new basslines for it while Ash and I watched New Order at Finsbury Park on DVD and checked out the new Peter Saville book. Awesome stuff. Watching the New Order gig sparked a new musical idea that everyone seems down with. Anyway, Robin did an amazing job and then I laid down some hooky goodness over some of the stuff. I now have the parts loaded up and will spend the next few days trying to bring that tune together.

All in all it was a successful evening. We now have 9 songs for the new album. 7 of them are ready for live drums and the other 2 are close. We will probably need one or two more songs. I've given us no timeline to finish this record. Its too good to rush. I've learned my lesson before, but on the flipside, I'm not going to let it go TOO long.

And now, some rest...

F

A quck peep

There's a lot of HF going down, right now actually. However, I need some sleep. Will report tomorrow about today's awesome sessions with the crew. However, here is further info on what is easily for me the first great release of 2004...

February 2004 sees a deluxe 2xCD reissue of the sole album by Revenge, the electro/hard rock hybrid fronted by New Order bass player Peter Hook between 1989 and 1992. Following the release of Technique in 1989, the four members of New Order spent time apart to pursue other ventures. Always intended as a proper band rather than a solo project, Hook was joined in Revenge by Chris Jones and Dave Hicks, and later by David Potts, who would remain with Hook as part of Monaco five years later.
One True Passion was originally released by Factory Records in June 1990 and spawned a trio of singles: 7 Reasons, Pineapple Face and Slave. Given free reign to indulge Hook's leather-trousered rockist instincts, the material welded hard rock to dance beats, with a lyrical focus on sin and redemption. The artwork was just as contradictory, combining sleek Peter Saville typography with softcore imagery by Suze Randall. The band toured like bastards, and in January 1992 delivered the excellent ep Gun World Porn, which offered a more laid back, intimate feel.
Deleted after the messy collapse of Factory in late 1992, One True Passion has now been extensively reconfigured by Peter Hook, and includes Hook's new recordings of the late period unreleased tracks The Wilding and Televive. The set comes with a full-length bonus disc, Be Careful What You Wish For, with lots of rare remixes and unreleased songs in demo form. All 30 tracks, over two hours of music, have been carefully digitally remastered. The booklet includes sleevenotes by Joy Division/New Order biographer Claude Flowers, and a new, highly candid interview with Peter Hook on the background of the band.
FOR RELEASE FEBRUARY 2 2004.



| tracklist
01 Televive (unreleased)
02 The Wilding (unreleased)
03 Deadbeat
04 State Of Shock
05 Little Pig (Remix)
06 Cloud 9
07 Jesus I Love You (B-side)
08 Pineapple Face
09 Big Bang
10 Slave
11 14K (B-side)
12 Bleachman
13 Surf Nazi
14 7 Reasons (Demo)
15 It's Quiet

01 Underworld (unreleased)
02 Deadbeat (Gary Clail Dub Mix)
03 State Of Shock (US Dance Mix)
04 Pineapple Face's Big Day Out (US Mix)
05 The Trouble With Girl (compilation track)
06 I'm Not Your Slave (Remix)
07 Hot Nights/Cool City (unreleased)
08 Surf Bass (unreleased)
09 Paris '68 (unreleased)
10 Bleach Boy (B-side)
11 Soul (unreleased)
12 Kiss The Chrome
13 Fag Hag
14 Precious Moments (unreleased)
15 Pumpkin (unreleased)

This will ruin me. Ill be listening to this for years..

F