12.7.04

The real and original Jackie Chan who has been disapproved by the Hollywood

First off, I just love the above title which is a quote from a description of the new Jackie Chan movie NEW POLICE STORY. My love of Jackie and his work is no secret to anyone, especially my lovely significant other who has to wake up every day to a wall of framed movie posters and photos and JC and me. Anyhow, I love the trailer for this new movie, so I'm hoping it's good. JC has supposedly decided to go back to HK and just make movies there for a few years. I can't say I disagree. When I'm not rushing to see his latest Hollywood work, we have a problem. It's ok JC, you made your millions, just do what you do best...

Speaking of doing what you do best, I found myself back at the Birdcage this weekend working again on problem-song 1956. We've got the musical part of the song in great shape, so now it was time for the next step. I had the lyrics and the vocal melody all ready to go and upon my first delivery, Brandt felt quite frankly that the approach was flat and needed more. Weeks of work down the drain in 10 seconds. However, it was the kick in the ass I needed because we sat there for quite awhile going through the track line by line and after a relatively short time, we had a new vocal melody cooking. Once I nailed the first verse, the rest of the song just poured out of me. It was a weird night and day experience in the studio, as I felt quite stymied early on and then suddenly, as if someone had flicked a switch, I was able to figure this song out with little trouble.

The other positive that came out of it was that while using a guitar to figure out certain notes for me to sing in the newer parts of the song Brandt, unbeknownst to himself, had written a new guitar part for the bridge. I convinced him to play what he was initially playing to figure out my vocal melody as a new solo. I then went and wrote a new vocal for the part and we had an even BETTER song.

And with this, and I'm probably jinxing myself here, my recorded contributions to EXIT STRATEGIES have come to a close. All that is left is one P. Saintface coming in to the studio to make some vocal magic happen. More on that soon...I hope.

With all of my musical work accomplished, I spent the later portion of the day/early evening with an assembled MOGpac at the annual German fest back home on the Island. Last year was a drunken mess of light and dark beers, sausage and potato pancakes. This year was a more reserved affair as we all got there much later, and we were all exhausted from our various musical projects (the Cobras had worked on tunes till 4:30am the night before and THEN rehearsed, which is a work ethic I can admire). Though brief, seeing the crew is always worth it.

Yesterday, Irene and I tried to sleep in, but there's just always something going on that keeps us from sitting still (In fact, I couldn't even get time to watch the WWE PPV till 1am last night). We checked out the off-Broadway show COOKIN', which is really good in a STOMP kinda way, but this time with Asian cooking. It made us quite hungry, so we immediately ate like champs. Of course, it was no rest of the weary as I spent the rest of my night with Country Music's finest, THE NASHVILLE ATTITUDE, fronted by my talented cousin Marc Vincent, who writes better original music than the covers he plays.

I'm catching up big time on recent music, but I'm too swamped too go in depth. But quickly: I'm shocked at how much I hate the new Prodigy album. I like the new Interpol, but felt it was too much of the same thing and they played it too safe. However, more tracks from the new Die Warzau album have emerged and I'm loving everything I'm hearing so far. That album has a lot of potential! Also, has anyone heard the new Clay People song FAILURE? It's a remix, but I like it. Mr. Neet, like Jimmy Marcus, remains one of the best singers ever in the genre and along with Jared, one of the best lyricists. No one can touch those two. Anyhow, the new Clay song reminds me of recent Chemlab. Funny, innit?

Little time, little sleep, but nothing to complain about, kids.

F

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