Its Saturday night and I am watching two guys that are both older than me be high and do nothing but sew. This is how exciting my life has become, and this is what being a touring musician does for you. Also I think I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome because the pain in my right hand and wrist is comparable to that of having an obese woman step on your foot in a sharp high heel. I also feel like my ears stick out like elf ears.

JKK was cleaning out his room today and, for some reason, found a bunch of BOP, TygerBeat and etc kinds of magazines. In this one copy of BOP there is a full page photo of Green Day, back when they were a shitty looking Gilman St punk band. The funny thing is that with the picture there is an article/interview with the band with the sub headline “Looks at the Positive Side.” I wonder if when Green Day’s signed their deal with Reprise Records that their PR guy would throw them some questions from BOP magazine and that they would be in an issue that says they look at the positive side in a magazine that has Jonathan Taylor Thomas on the cover (ad you could enter to win a pair of his shoes, apparently).

And furthermore, I wonder if when they saw their article in BOP magazine did they begin to realize they weren’t some shitty Gilman St punk band anymore?

So I have decided that I love Facebook. Not only does it blow the dicks and tits off of Myspace as a social networking tool, but, and actually way more importantly, its an excellent way to measure your life against people you only slightly know. I don't ever frequent the pages of the people I know very well, but all the kids I haven't spoken to since highschool and I'm all over that shit. My favorite is when kids that were skinny got real fat. I'm just saying.

But anyway, what I mean that is that Facebook exists for people who think they are doing really well in their life to exploit that in front of all the people they know that aren't exceeding in the manner that they are. The kids I went to highschool with are great example of this because their entire pages just exist to flex some kid of muscle...take for instance this on kid who is currently enrolled in Harvard Graduate school. His about me or some shit says "facebook is static, follow my thoughts on twitter" with a link to his Twitter account...but I cant for the life of me figure out what credential, if any, makes me feel like I should give two Chihuahua sized shits about his thoughts and opinions. But thats not the case, because I have an English degree and I know I am not qualified or interesting enough for anyone to get their dicks hard about and sentences I produce. What I am trying to get at is that the kids from my highschool, and anyone on Facebook that thinks they are better than most people, use Facebook to boast their achievements, however minimal. Guess, what, anyone can go to Europe, so, your study abroad pictures arent that impressive. In fact, Europe is so easy to get to that playing in shitty pun rock bands got me there. And I probably had a way better time...have you watched a grown man piss his pants in Le Havre, France? I doubt it.

I dont remember where I was going with all of this. But anyway, as a social experiment i think it would be great if Facebook added a "Income" information option like Myspace...i'd love to see what the Galloway School Alumni do with that.

But, yeah, I leave for Philadelphia the day after tomorrow so I guess I should probably finish all of this shit.

Jena Berlin (September 2008 - Present)
So I met the dudes from JB at the Fest 5...they came through Atlanta a couple times over the next year and I thought they were all sweet dudes. Another thing I was doing in the year that we played with JB a couple times in ATL, i was also finishing up college at KSU. What makes this important is that my whole plan for college was to get done with it and then to spend the rest of my year on tour. About the second time JB came through town i realized that i was about to college and had no fucking plan as to how I was going to spend much time on the road. I emailed Jeff and said if they ever needed a guitar player or a bass player to let me know, and sure as bulldog farts smell bad, Jeff hit me up about playing bass for them in Europe. Its amazing the way peoples idea of you changes when you tell them you went on tour in Europe. I mean, I guess it was cool and all, and a totally different perspective, but also, as I said before, everyone goes to Europe. Going to Europe is the new gay...everyone is doing it.

Mose Giganticus (October 2008 - Present)
the story with Mose is very similar to JB...i was on tour with Die Benny, met Matt Mose, said if he ever needed a guitar player to let me know, and now I am going back to philly next week to play guitar with him and Justin for like, a month and inevitably having everything I own smelling like vegetable oil and making 7 dollars a night.

Take that Galloway School Alumni!

Why I am 24 and live with my parents part 3

So while I was making a cheese quesadilla (and then subsequently dropping it on the ground) I realized that Mexican Food is probably the biggest consistency of my whole life…I’ve been playing in punk rock bands for 10 years, Jim has been cutting my hair for just a hair (ha!) shorter than that, but for as long as I can remember I have really loved Mexican food. I think if it wasn’t for Mexican restaurants I don’t think I could have made the jump from dickhead to vegetarian. Matt Mose and Kylemotron taught me how to make ‘Tour Burritas’ and they are still the only food that I can make that has a less than 10% chance of me fucking it up.

Anyway, back to the reasons as to why I still live in my parents basement. Oh, and by the way I still ate the aforementioned quesadilla. It looked like this:



And that’s not ketchup, its Taco Sauce. But when I was like, 5, my mom use to make Beef Taco’s and I would put ketchup all over them. Fucking gross right?

Anyway, back to those bands...

Die Benny (May 2007 – Present)
So yeah, I nothing crazy happened at our last Die Benny show and I didn’t have to quit, which is awesome because I think Die Benny is probably the most interesting band I have ever been a part of. That’s to say that in Die Benny I can really do whatever the fuck I want on guitar and its all fair game. Shitty two hand finger tapping? Awesome. 90 second pop punk songs that end in a tornado of noise and dissonance? Fuck yea. All encompassing wall of noise made by 11 effects pedals that I don’t really need? You go it. Never before have I been in a band with a group of guys that not only give such a little shit about what people think of them, but also almost go out of their way to do the opposite of what people want and expect out of our band. At our show last night Jeff Honea left his bass at the venue. Just to give you and idea here of how things work.

Mapmaker (March 2008-August 2008)
So Stephen Floyd and I had this idea that we were going to start a band that sounds like Lemuria and ride on Lemuri’s coattails, and success was going to follow. There some old saying about “plans” and “mice” and “men” that I cant remember but was the title of a book (speaking of which, Of Mice and Men is without question the most depressing, unnecessary book in all of English Literature. Not only does it serve no purpose, but there is no theme, no point. Its just sad because sad seems to make it have meaning but in reality writing a book that sad isn’t deep and just makes you look like a real sonofabith), but anyway, this plan was, surprisingly, not as bulletproof as we had expected. Although Stephen and I wrote some very enjoyable songs, we never played one show and never did anything other than record a bunch of songs that have no vocals. In all honesty, Mapmaker hardly qualifies as a band, and I think one of the main reasons why I include it is because it is responsible for producing the only song I’ve ever written where I don’t play one powerchord. Yeah.

It’s late and even though I cant sleep I suppose I should try to since I have to wake up at 6:55. Dogs need food and water and have to piss and shit regardless of when I go to bed.

We’ll continue this boring odyssey soon.

shitting in hands part 2

So it’s like, twenty till four and I am sitting here watching an episode of King of the Hill. This is how I spend my off days…sitting on this couch watching episodes of King of the Hill and sometimes watching Dexter on my computer. In about 3 episodes I will be out of Dexter episodes to watch and I have no idea what the fuck I will do with myself.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if my boss told me that I didn’t have a ob when I got back from tour. I think if I had to look for a new job, setting aside ideal jobs (anything involving writing, really), I think I would probably still end up with a job that involves a certain level of dog shit. I just read Brendan Kellys blog where he mentions the old saying “You can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.” Ideally I would love to pay bills and buy a house by writing for some awesome magazine, but I’m sure I’ll just stick to dog shit for a little while.

Anyway, back to the bands I have played in…this is where things start to get interesting. There became a point where playing in one band was not nearly enough so things start to get a little wabbly. Hopefully I can keep this all straight. I was drinking a diet coke when I sat down here, now I can’t find it. Anyway.

Left to Rust (August 2003 – October 2004)
So, Rhys, the drummer for Dead By Summer also played drums for Left To Rust. Rhys was (and still is) a very sweet kid, but was not the best and most reliable drummer so he was kicked out of the band long before anyone informed him of this. So when they finally did tell him that he was kicked out of the band (after he fucked up several times at a show and then made a huge scene outside of Swayzes…apparently one of our friends spilled the beans to him that he wasn’t going to be the drummer of Left to Rust anymore…I think they had been trying out new drummers behind his back...anyway) they moved Andrew Wiggins to drums, Marc from bass to guitar, and I jumped in on bass. Andrew had a problem singing while playing drums with a stationary microphone, so we bought him a $100 headset mic that I still have to this day. This was without question the most dysfunctional, miserable band I have ever been a part of, simply because we wanted to sound one way, Wiggins wanted to sound like something else. We all really liked Small Brown Bike and the Honor System and The Ghost and Wiggins had just begun hanging out with Matt Benard and dabbling with his “creative side.” When Andrew first made a myspace for us, under influences he said “Andrew listens to music that sounds like what Jackson Polluck paintins look like. Zac listens to music that Andrew thinks is fucking terrible.” It should be noted that Andrew Wiggins almost kicked me out of playing in Left To Rust because he was so excited to play with Small Brown Bike but was nervous we wouldn’t be ready…so yeah. Andrew would also re-write my bass lines for me because I guess he hated what I was doing. We played a lot of really good shows but as a whole, being in that band was not any fun for anyone. James and Wiggins both quit the band at least once over Livejournal, just to give you some kind of frame of reference at how shitty all of this was. Wiggins finally quit when he wanted to play in Blame Game, and was famously quoted by Marc and James as have saying the reason he was quitting was because he just wanted to “make art.” I don’t know either.

Benard (October 2004 – Present)
So, when Wiggins quit, Josh from Stranger By Day and No Cigar convinced us to keep playing, and that he should sing. We got Alan from Kama to drum for us and we started playing together in October of 2004, and didn’t play our first real show (without Josh…he moved to Birmingham for Law School and never actually did a show with us) until almost a year later. We played at the Die Benny loft in March 2006 and Nathan became our singer soon there after. I don’t have a lot to say about this band other than we are what we are and it is what it is. I’ve accepted that Benard is never going to be the touring band I want it to be, and I’m OK with that. We’ve played a lot of great shows with some great bands (and one terrible one with Don Caballero) and were (I think) the first band responsible for footprints on the 141 Moreland ceiling. Having said all of that, we have had to cancel a show because one of our members wanted to go to Disney World. Sooooo.

Nature Boy (December 2004 – May 2005)
I think the only reason Benard was able to keep Alan Hamilton signed on to playing our version of punk rock was because I would get him to my house early to play double time punk. You see, Alan Hamilton probably wouldn’t listen to Benard if he wasn’t in Benard, and in order to get him over that hurdle, I had to fill his double time urge. So we started a pop punk band called Nature Boy that was in fact named after “the Nature Boy” Ric Flair. If you don’t know who that is then you obviously didn’t grow up in the south. Google it. We broke up when Paul, our singer, moved to Chicago. We made two recordings and A lot like Punx Named Bob, I hated both of them as soon as we finished them.

Carmine (Novemberish 2006 to May 2007)
So Nathan played in Die Benny and Benard when he started playing guitar for Carmine. Carmine was like Nature Boy, only a lot better. I would write the most absurdly technical pop-punk songs I could, clad with the fastest, most sporadic parts and changes that were feasible, and Nathan and Alan would learn them and play them with me. As far as what I was writing, that was probably the most creative I have ever been. We played some shows as an instrumental band and tried out some singers, but we eventually threw in the towel…and the story oh why we broke up is actually way more entertaining than the story of how we were a band. As I mentioned, Nathan played in Die Benny as well. So did Cameron, Carmines bass player. Now anyone who knows Cameron knows the story behind him, but I would just like to put it out there that I had to tune his bass for him once in the middle of our set. He was so fucked up that he couldn’t remember the Blink-182 cover (yeah that’s right fuck off) and couldn’t tune his guitar from Drop D to standard E. Anyway, Die Benny kicked him out of their band, and I joined Die Benny behind his back, going as far as to play the record release show for the record he had recorded with the band. We finally moved Die Benny practice to my house, and when Cameron showed up to Carmine practice and saw Die Benny’s gear, the bells finally fucking rang and he realized that I took his place in Die Benny. He continued to come to practice and would just pout and play bass as loud as he could while Alan and I would work on new parts. So I broke up the band via myspace and Cameron took me off his top friends.

That’s all for now. As I said this is where I joined Die Benny, but we have a show tonight and who knows, maybe something will happen and I’ll quit the band in the middle of our set leaving a much more interesting story to read.

Also, our dogs need food and I need to find my soda...both way more important than talking about shitty punk rock bands that I played in.

Cataloging Where I've Been Going Wrong Part 1

As I stated yesterday (this begs the question...if you are still awake, was something that happened less than 12 hours ago still yesterday? even though yesterday hasn't ended....whatthefuckever), I began playing shows 10 years ago. I’m not 100% sure what this says about me, so in an effort to figure that out, I am going to chronicle all of the shitty (and sometimes not so shitty) bands I have played in since I was 13 years old. This is going to be about as enthralling as it sounds…apologies for anyone who somehow found their way here to see pictures of witty remarks written on bathroom walls. I leave for four again in like, a week and a half…there will be plenty of that to come.

Before I begin I think I should first put in writing what constitutes as a “band.” By a band I mean, we practiced more than once and had songs and a bandname and maybe played shows, even if all of the before mentioned qualifiers were fucking terrible. But, my first ever attempt at playing music with friends never produced a song, only practiced twice, but had a real, REAL shitty name and never played. So, we wont go over that abomination. Instead, we’ll start with a slightly smaller abomination…

Punx Named Bob (August 1998 – March 2001)
Like most people (with the exception of Lars Ulrich and that bass player from Thrice), my first band was absolutely god awful and no one gave a shit about us. I played guitar and wrote all of the music and lyrics, and since I was 13-16 during this time and had absolutely no perspective on the world around me…I produced songs that were rip offs of my friends bands and Blink-182. I played guitar very poorly, sang terribly, and all and all was the conductor on a trainwreck that I still can’t escape. Every once and a while someone will bring up the fact that I was in a band called Punx Named Bob and my heart shrivels up and dies a little every time. We played a bunch of shows at Slapp Records in Forrest Park, which was a dump next to a teen center. One time I left my bag in the back area of the venue and my cellphone (please don’t ask me why I had a cellphone when I was 14 or 15 years old) was stolen by one of the kids who frequented the Teen Center. We recorded an EP at Southside Studios which I hated from the second we got the “master” back. We paid for it by using all the change from a change jar from my recently deceased grandmothers house (that actually had close to $500 in it), and my dad let me go to his office to print off the inserts for our “CD.” I was embarrassed every time someone bought a copy from me, but still have a copy for some reason. We made a lot of friends in the scene and were constantly told by the “older bands” that when we got a little bit older we were really going to be a great band. I didn’t realize it then, but now looking back this was just there sweet way of saying that we were a really bad band. I can’t blame them.

More Than Maybe (April 2001 – May 2002)
Punx Named Bob had enough sense to change our name (but only after going by Punx Named Bob for two and a half years…), but changing your name to something you lifted from a GoldFinger lyric isn’t much of a jump. Somewhere along the lines of More Than Maybe, we all started listening to a lot of Thrice, Poison the Well and In Flames (for the record, I hated In Flames then, and still hate them now) and it started to show in our music. I started screaming some, which I guess was kind of cute. As More Than Maybe we played a couple shows and started to get a name for ourselves in the suburban Atlanta scene. Andrew Wiggins smashed his guitar after a show we played with a bunch of bigger Atlanta bands, so after that we thought people saw us as a band with a “crazy” live show, so we tried to expand upon that. One day we went and saw Fall On Deaf Years from Philadelphia at Under The Couch and became enamored with how the band played in the middle of the floor and not on the stage. Obviously, we stole this idea from them. We actually got to play with Fall on Deaf Years in May 2002, which was one of our last shows ever and was actually the first time I ever played with a touring band. Back then I couldn’t really grasp what a touring band is. Funny aside, the three guys in Fall of Deaf Years and the four guys in Green is Mean (and possible a merch guy) toured in a Ford Taurus towing a small trailer. Two of the guys actually rode in the trunk. Shit was insane. Anyway, we broke up after Andrew Wiggins quit our band because he wanted to play hardcore. If you know Andrew Wiggins now, you know how awesomely absurd this is. Oh, and when we were changing our name from Punx Named Bob to More Than Maybe, the guys wanted the new name to be Covered Bridge Arson Conspiracy Project…or the shorter version Covered Bridge Conspiracy. I was adamantly against it, and was ridiculed and called an asshole countless times for not liking the name, but I still stand by the fact that “Covered Bridge Conspiracy” is the most ridiculously stupid fucking idea for a band name ever.

Dead By Summer (September 2002 – Summer 2003)
After Andrew quit “> M.” (did I mention this was our abbreviation for More Than Maybe? We were a bunch of fucking assholes, weren’t we?), I wanted to keep playing in bands. Andrew had also quit Dead By Summer for some similar reason (he ended up starting a metal band that had a really, REALLY terrible name that I can’t remember right now. I think it was Lot 13, but I could totally be mistaken, anyway, they sounded like a bad Between the Buried and Me. Their singer wore face paint an JNCO’s when they played. I actually sang for them once cause he was so bad), so I jumped in to play bass. I had never played bass in a band before, but figured if I had played guitar in bands, I could just as easily play bass…and I was pretty right. I am by no means a great bass player, and I probably just as good of a bass player now as I was back then. Anyway, Rhys, our drummer use to like to throw his drumset after we played, so Daniel took to the habit of throwing his guitar across the stage when we were done, so, like an idiot, I did the same with my bass. I have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea, but I did, and actually destroyed a bass I bought simply to destroy. What a dick, right? Anyway, we stopped being a band after we stopped being friends with our guitar player Kerry. It’s a really long story but in short Kerry hated us for something that didn’t really involve any of us, blah blah blah. Rhys also moved to La Grange to go to school, only to drop out very soon after. We made one recording that, given the circumstance of recording it and how young we were, I think is a pretty decent little EP...regardless of the worst fucking bass tone ever.

I guess that’s where I’ll leave it for now. Things start to pick up HERE…as I continued to play bass very shittly in bands for 6 more years, with some guitar thrown in there as well.

So as of this past Friday…February 13th, I have officially been playing in punk rock bands for 10 years. At the age of 13, I played my first ever show on February 13th, 1999 in Joe Caubo’s basement with like, 10 of my friends there. 10 years later and I am still playing in basement with 10 fucking people watching. Godfuckingdammit.

There’s no dog shit to pick up today, so I’m going to go eat a whole $5 Little Ceasers pizza and try and figure out where the fuck I went wrong in my life.

I’ll expand on this tomorrow.

Probably way better things I could have spent my money on. Oh well.

If you don't get it, watch Batman Begins. Also, it's not finished.
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