Theme Park Experience

This week's edition covers my current love of the original Bat Out of Hell record.

An important hurdle for the Pull Tabs was jumped over last week. We got our first two shows out of the way, but for me, something I hoped for has happened: we have begun working on new material. I don't mean to sound like I don't enjoy the material we have now. Far from it. I'm just very glad that we keep cooking up new material instead of beating our older material into the ground. I say all of this because I've played in bands where our repertoire was small and any chances of it growing were slim to none. The bands I've most enjoyed in the past were bands where new material came along and came naturally, usually via jamming. I've found that when you jam together, a group sound emerges. Nobody gets left out in the cold and everyone has a say. A band democracy is good, especially if you call yourself a band. Probably one of the more puzzling situations I've played in a band involved a repertoire of only twelve songs. All were originals, but usually, only eig...

This past Saturday, instead of risking torn calves and sprained ankles with kickball on a muddy field, I decided to help a friend out on a music video shoot. Given my options for the day were do that or sit at home, I wanted to help my friend out in any way that I could. I've been on video shoots before and they can take a lot out of you. Luckily, the eight hours flew by pretty quickly, mainly due to the fact that the director (my friend Joe) ran a very smooth and friendly set. Proving once again about how things can be run in an efficient and positive way, this stuff always starts with the top. Certain sides of people that you never knew about can come out when you work with them. I've seen this with people I've played in bands, as well helping a friend move to a new place. Sometimes those sides are sides you wish you never saw, but that's life. I'm reminded of a chapter in David Lynch's book on meditation and directing, Catching the Big Fish . Before you skim ...

I may have worked on my next book for almost four years, but by no means do I have hundreds of pages to show for it. Maybe I'm too critical with what I write, but I do a lot of editing when I write. There's always room for more editing later. I write what I hope will make the final cut. In other words, I don't believe I have a problem with written diarrhea. But maybe I should have this "problem" in the writing process? I recently read an interview with an author whose parents have been very prolific in their careers as writers, and it looks like he is continuing that trail. Claiming to have written almost thirty pages in only two days for his next book, I wonder if any of those twenty-something pages will amount to anything for the final cut. The truth is, I'm not a big fan of cutting a lot of stuff. Not to brag, but I try to leave as little excess stuff in the final draft. With POST , only a couple big portions were clipped between the rough draft stage to th...

This week's edition is about a show I saw under the strong urging of my friend Matt Trana. This is another way of me saying thanks to him.

I can't help but feel anger over the announcement of Voxtrot breaking up . Not because a band is breaking up, since that happens every day and can happen to any band. No, I'm just quite peeved at how this band had a lot of praise and momentum and then seemingly zilch once their self-titled debut album arrived. Why I'm peeved is that I never believed the ultra-negative response to Voxtrot was justified. As I've listened to tracks from the album over the years, I will say I lean more towards songs from the EPs prior to it, but the songs on Voxtrot are not bad at all. I could never understand why writers who almost universally praised everything these guys did so quickly dismissed the band and any semblance of fandom post- Voxtrot . I'm one to talk about loving one album by a band but not being as enthusiastic about their next (hello, Modest Mouse), but there's a big difference between that and completely disowning any fandom of a band. Seeing that makes me wonde...

In an oddly roundabout way, the recent announcement of At the Movies ' cancellation introduced me to A.O. Scott's writing. I don't mean his movie reviews; I'm talking about his columns on films. Thanks to "following" Scott and his soon-to-be former co-host Michael Phillips on Twitter, I've been introduced to thoughtful, well-rounded articles by Scott on the imminent demise of the TV show as well as the portrayal of violence in Kick-Ass . There was a point in reading the column on the cancellation where I started cheering. Not because a quality television show was going off the air. Rather it was how Scott explained that the fears of film criticism's death have been professed before. Many, many, many, many times before. Referring to a 1990 piece by Richard Corliss called “All Thumbs, or, Is There a Future for Film Criticism?,” Scott wrote, "The threat Mr. Corliss identified has migrated to the Internet, where self-credentialed commenters snark...

In response to the new blog layout, my friend Richard asked, "It's April Fool's Day, right?" Well, this isn't some joke or stunt. After five years of looking at dark blue with dark green, I figured it was time to look at something that was light green and blue. Why the change in design? Frankly, I was inspired after I checked out Keith's (new-to-me) blog , Celluloid Highways. Something about it -- especially its clean layout and easy-to-navigate design -- just made me think of how I could make this blog a better read. The change also represents a new leaf turning in my life. I don't want to go into specifics just yet, but I have no problem speaking about this in metaphors. Some big things have changed in my life for the better while some thing that's been lingering for years must be worked on. When that happens, I'll write about it, but for now, I'm still plotting a break from a Shawshank prison that's been locking up a lot of my brain for...

After five years of blogging here, I finally found a layout that I really like. Here's to happy days ahead.

This week's edition finds me raving about Spoon's Transference again. More raving on this record will be written later this year.

Now that the band has a name, I figured the story behind the name should be told. As someone who has been guilty of asking a band where they got their name from quite a few times, I accept being at the receiving end of this question. After many weeks of discussion, the three of us could not agree on a single name. I suggested some out-there names, as did Kyle, but Mike came up with the name. The Pull Tabs was at the end of one of many lists of possible band names. This list happened to be on Mike's cell phone and we all looked at the list at the end of practice a few weeks ago. In deciding on the Pull Tabs' name, I remembered the story of how Hot Water Music decided on their name: none of the members hated the name, so they went with it. The same happened with us. The three us didn't hate it, so we went with it. I'm no beer connoisseur, but I do know a little about pull tabs on old cans of beer. That's what a pull tab is. Since our band has a bit of a vintage sound ...

This Saturday marks something I haven't done in almost ten years: play a show with a band that has never played a show before. Kyle, Mike, and I have played quite a few shows with other bands, but together as the Pull Tabs, this will be the first one. And just the beginning, thankfully. What started out as some friends jamming at a relatively quiet level in my bedroom morphed into a loud raging monster a few months ago. We lucked into an affordable rehearsal room two months ago, and despite being surrounded by all types of metal bands practicing as loud as us, we've retained the sound that we started with. But what that sound is, well, it keeps morphing. I've played in bands that writing material was always a challenge. Both bands rarely came up with material while jamming. We just practiced the same things over and over again. Hell, even one of those bands wrote a number of songs that sounded suspiciously like well-known songs by well-known bands, from the Stooges to ZZ To...

This week's edition includes a tribute to the summer of 2001 via Ash's great album, Free All Angels .

And now, a Dear John letter for two TV shows I have decided to part company with. Dear the talented and hard-working folks behind the V reboot and Flashforward , After a number of months of dedication and patience, I feel strongly that we should separate. It's nothing personal. I just think we should spend time in separate spaces of life. The number of reasons for this separation are numerous. Here are just a few. When I watch you try to forge something into a cohesive story with characters I want to root for, you get all caught up in trying to make plot twists and jumbled backstories. I'm no fool, but where's the human draw? Or are we thinking too much about a possible future, with or without aliens? One-too-many actors and actresses have been pushed to chew scenery and furrow their brows in hopes of taking this material seriously. As if this legitimizes the doubters, it sadly does not. When I watch shows like LOST and Fringe , I get a sense of human interaction and bond...

Here's a little update on book #2, still titled When We Were the Kids . Writing comes in spurts. Some days I come up with a lot of material, other days I come up with very little. But I think about the book a lot and take lots of mental notes. When it comes down to sitting in front of my computer to iron everything out, that's when things can hit a wall. Sometimes the flow comes naturally. Other times it's like passing a kidney stone. I credit being back into the swing of playing in a band with this recent upswing. Lots of stuff comes from practicing for hours and practicing in a warehouse filled with all kinds of metal bands. Paying a visit to Guitar Center once in a while also helps. There's something fun and challenging about taking events that did not happen in my high school bands and setting in the mid-1990s. If it sounds plausible, chances are I'll go with it. Something I considered doing with POST but never did was come up with a mix CD or two covering popu...

In this week's edition of Staff Trax, I mention Rival Schools' United By Fate . This was a record that helped me gain a certain kind of optimism in the fall of 2001, and now it feels like a lot of that optimism is coming back. And boy is it nice.