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