Category: Music

May 8, 2003 /

So I actually did it: Running on three hours of sleep, I wrote the ten-page culminating statement on My Theatre in three and a half hours, then presented it earlier tonight. And it was pretty good. I’m exasperated with myself for doing this yet again, but at the same time, I’m now fully convinced that I’m capable of flight and the picking up of cars.

I know there’s more to talk about, but I’m really too tired to be capable of rational discourse right now (even the paragraph above was written down on an envelope at around 4:00). But hey! New Guster!

May 5, 2003 /

Ultimate Frisbee is the new running. I get about the same workout, but it takes three times as long, and the whole affair is a lot dirtier. I also get to publicly embarrass myself, in that I (really, seriously) can’t throw or catch. On the plus side, I keep taking my falls on the same two places, so I bleed a lot!

Saturday night was the First Annual Drama Formal, and also the public debut of DJ Jazzy O’Badkins (that’s me). It was mostly cute little froshers, and they only stayed for maybe an hour of the allotted three, but at least they were there for tracks 6 – 18, what I consider the best part of the mix (on which I spent about six painstaking hours). You can see the HTML version if you want. Yes, I started it with Chumbawamba. I was being retro! I make no apologies! Nobody was there yet anyway!

My baby sister Caitlan, who wields the powers of all Adkinses combined, has decided to go to Georgetown, back in the little hamlet where we were all born. I still would have liked it if she’d picked Centre, but now I can say that our family has conquered all three important Kentuckian smallliberalartscolleges. O’Doyle rules!

April 26, 2003 /

Two hours of sleep last night, as I stupidly stayed up until three before I even realized that I still had to do my homework. I say “stupidly” because I wasn’t even staying up for any specific purpose–I just hung out with Michelle and Jessica and David, beatboxing and rhapsodizing about the Neptunes. That’s college, I guess, but then I thought I was supposed to get good at time management someday. Ha ha ha!

That wasn’t exactly the best night to skimp on sleep, either, as today was a big day: not only our biggest crowd at Chalk Circle, but my first ever show as the drummer for Grandma’s Genius! And it rocked! We’d practiced together on exactly one song, which we didn’t end up playing, and the PA was crap, which made for a frustrating beginning. As it turns out, though, once we got started we had a pretty flawless forty minutes. We’re good at this!

Then, just as we finished our last song (BNL, “Brian Wilson,” where I get to go crazy thundergod at the end), the first drops of rain started to fall… all over the band that had earlier refused to swap us time slots.

That’s right. God loves Grandma’s Genius more.

(Also, found while searching for Neptunes sites: Conch is their specialty!)

April 24, 2003 /

Last night was the least stressful opening night I’ve ever been through, thanks largely to the way the stage is set up, I think. The musicians play behind what’s called a scrim at the back of the stage–a very loosely woven canvas that’s semitransparent straight onbut opaque from an angle. Because it makes the audience look fuzzy, it fosters the illusion that we’re behind some kind of two-way mirror and don’t have to worry about being watched. Even though I know consciously that the audience can see us just as well as we can see them, that still put me at ease enough to play as well as I ever have. This is neat!

It seemed to work pretty well for everyone else, too, and the music really sounded great. More credit for that goes to the writer than to us, but hey, he gets his bow too.

This is the big crunch week, in that I have no more free evenings to work until Sunday, and I’ve been struggling to keep up. I did finally get in an appointment to see my career counselor about a resume critique; we’d been having a little difficulty finding a time because, and I quote, “she’s got a mare due.” Only in Kentucky.

Anyway, she seemed to like my resume and my cover letter (the first one I’ve ever written!), so that felt good. It still bemuses me, though, how little one’s qualifications matter compared to the monumental importance of making them all fit on one page. My counselor’s a nice lady, but I honestly think she knows as much about line spacing and margins as she does about, y’know, jobs.

Another thing I’m behind on: sending out graduation announcements. Eek. I went to the library yesterday to copy pages out of my mother’s address book, which is kind of like a library in itself. There are sheaves of apocryphal driving directions, notes and updates, about five different styles of handwriting, and some entries that take up half a page alone because they’ve been crossed out and corrected so many times. It’s a fascinating object, and I feel like I should get a grant and do an archaeological dig on it.

Too many things on my head. Why is everyone getting sick? Should I bleach my hair again? And how the hell am I supposed to wrap up this entry?

April 9, 2003 /

Entry 255! I have almost a whole byte’s worth of journal!

Every time I start to get uppity about something I’m doing at school, dramatic irony thwops me on the forehead. Like, for example, the past couple of weeks have been the beginning of music rehearsals for the spring production of Chalk Circle. That means, thanks to the grand tradition of Brendan’s Roommates Letting Him Pretend He’s A Musician, I’ve been actually reading things on sheets of music and playing them on congas with a band of real musicians. This honestly gives me the shivers.

Then, just as I’m starting to believe something like “hey! this stuff can be learned,” along comes Wynton Marsalis.

I only got to watch the first third of the show (two hours), but everything I saw was… well, pretty much what you’d expect from Wynton Marsalis’s band, assuming you know who Wynton Marsalis is. I don’t even think I enjoyed it as much as some of the other people watching it up on the catwalk with me, because I honestly don’t have a developed taste for jazz. I was still in awe. The talent and skill those guys put on display was ineffable.

That said, today was the first day I ran my whole route–what I guess now is around three miles–without stopping to walk. I haven’t done that since high school, and I did both on rainy days, and there’s really no dramatic irony possible there. No matter how many people run better than me, the fact is that right now I can run as fast as I ever have in my life.

March 30, 2003 /

I never talked about the Guster show, did I? It was a little strange, because all of a sudden, Guster is a rock band.

This was the third time I’ve seen them, and I never knew that. I don’t think they really knew either. They took a long time off from headlining shows while lots of little Guster fans loaned their Guster CDs out to soon-to-be Guster fans, and when they came back, a) they were suddenly hardcore and b) everybody knew all the words to the songs. They surprised the hell out of everyone, including themselves, and the result was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. And they didn’t even play “Bury Me.” They didn’t have to.

The opening act was this band Blue Merle, the first purported “alt-country” band who seem to actually care about the country part. I always thought I hated most country music, but recently I’ve come to understand that what I hate is Nashville music, and that the country influence isn’t inherently bad.

(I still hate steel guitar, though.)

Anyway, Blue Merle was possibly the most enthusiastic alternative-lite band ever–much, much too happy to be doing what they were doing. This was one of the reasons I liked them so much, the other being that their music is really really good. You can stream the beginning of some of their songs on their (unnecessarily Flashy) site, and I just put up Bens mp3s like a week ago, so I won’t post them now, but be warned! Or, if you live around here, ask to borrow the CD. I’m flexible. I can handle that.

Oh, and they totally signed a broken drumstick (which the drummer threw and for which I dived, and which I snagged, in the process nearly mauling a girl with a broken arm)! I’d cam it, except it’s not really that interesting. It’s basically a broken drumstick with permanent marker on it.

You can’t borrow it, though. That baby goes on my wall.

March 13, 2003 /

Over the hump of the week now, I think. Wow. Coming back from SETC and going straight back into school things was like jumping out of a placid, cozy houseboat right into a sausage grinder (um, underwater). Makeup tests, makeup homework, Cento, road show, consultant meetings, old-computer hauling, more road show–it’s all been a bit ridiculous,and I’ve had fourteen hours of sleep in the last sixty.

Next couple of days are a bit of a breath, thankfully, and then it’s only a week until spring break. It looks as if Jon, Amanda and I are going to roll up to Bloomington to check out IU and maybe do some interviewing, even though Jon most likely won’t end up there–they apparently only give money to PhD students, and Wake Forest is still falling over itself to attach his name to cash for a Master’s.

Also, on the way up we might get to see Guster in Cincinnati! I want to visit people in Louisville, too, and I’m trying to figure out a way to get dropped off and just stay there on our way back from Indiana. Anybody have a room to let? I’m penniless, but I’m a right hard-working scullery boy, I have all my own teeth, and I reckon I can pick out a merry tune on my nose-flute.

January 8, 2003 /

I’m living in a small apartment with some of my best friends, apprenticed in a trade I find fascinating, dating an amazing girl, working with a dream cast on a play that really excites me and playing in one of my favorite bands. It occurs to me that these are probably the best days of my life.

December 3, 2002 /

Managed to sleep for three hours. For me, Mister Doesn’t Nap, that’s fairly hardcore. I feelbetter, if not nearly better enough to do everything I have to do tonight. Onward, men! Bring me mysword and red shirt!

Anyway, music. I recently rediscovered that the soundtrack to Sneakers is excellent walking-around music, especially in winter. I think itwould also be great music for a silent underwater documentary, or a console RPG, and would like totest those theories someday. BrendanCo: Where the music for everything is the soundtrack toSneakers!

Something about providing great semi-rare music illegally, blah blah blah. Listen to this, it’s myfavorite track.

james_horner_feat._branford_marsalis_-_’too_many_secrets’.mp3