Thursday, August 13, 2009

Wednesday House Party at Stu Baker's, Austin




Stu threw a great house party! We had a keg of a terrific local beer called Lone Star, the official beer of Texas (no joke). Stu set us up in his practice space, which was off of the living room, and appeared to have once been a garage, but was a finished space now. It was very cool. We set up and Kayte and Kevin did their thing. Kayte sounded great, as always, I mean I've never heard her have a bad day. Kevin played with uncharacteristic intensity, and by that I mean he is always intense when he plays for Kayte, and that seems uncharacteristic of him, since he is so laid back most of the time. It is fun to watch them and enjoy the music that comes out of them both, each built up by the other. Then Joe Next Door played, and we had a good time. Kevin challenged me to change verb tenses on I Love The Way You Smell to I Am Loving The Way You Are Smelling. Stu jumped in on drums for I Miss The Explosions, and Kevin played bass so Scott could play his lead guitar part. In spite of the smallness of the room, we had people in the room dancing and listening for the whole show, sometimes as many as 8 additional people to the band! And, we met some awesome folks. In addition to Stu's roommates, Clifford the special needs school teacher and Dave the aspiring filmmaker, there was "Boosh" (his name was actually Will, bu he was so called because he kept saying boosh to highlight points, and end sentences, and there seemed to be a direct ration of beer consumed to booshes). Turns out Boosh was from Burlington, and had been to the very Denny's I talked about during our set! What a cool coincidence to run into a local all the way out there. He was just out for a visit too. Boosh led the dancing, and was mostly dancing with one of two girls, but at one point he was actually dancing with Scott, but I don't think Scott was really into it... Then there was Tim the awesome bassist, who studied math and music at Carolina, just like our very own bassist Scotty P is considering. Another nifty coincidence. And we mustn't forget the excellent Daniel of the band Legs Vs. Arms, who was super cool, and a very good musician. One funny misunderstanding we had was that right after our show he quickly grabbed my acoustic guitar and disappeared. I saw him take it but didn't know what had happened, and then he was no where to be found. A frantic search ensued as Stu and the others assured me he was cool, and it turns out that he was off serenading a girl, and had thought the guitar was Stu's. Drama! I got my guitar back of course, but I never heard how the girl liked the song... After our show, we had a jam session and played some weird blues. I played drums, and Tim played bass and Stu played guitar. Then a big white guy with an even bigger afro came in and started making the loudest sound ever heard by human ears. Turns out he had a tiny little pen shaped kazoo in his pocket at all times, and he got very close to the mic and played it loud. It was so impossibly loud that I actually covered my ears with my hands while playing the drums with my feet, and only occasionally let go of an ear to hit the snare! But we rocked, needless to say. The last jam session was with Daniel on drums, and me on bass, and a guy whose name I can't remember on guitar. He played really cool guitar parts, but perhaps his most distinguishing feature was how often and how elaborately he apologized for himself. He would start saying something and 2 or 3 sentences later you would realize that he had just been setting up to say something derogatory about his playing, his music or himself. He has a band, and his music was awesome. And like with all things, you don't get good at them unless you practice. He was definitely a virtuoso self criticizer. His insults against himself were complex, subtle, artful, and continuous. Someone must've really hurt his feelings a long time ago to make him so keen to be sure everyone knows that he's not trying to rise above his station. But as with all low self-esteem, it is not real. He didn't actually suck at all. He obviously practiced his guitar plenty, and wrote cool music, and didn't need to apologize for anything. I hope he feels confident one day. He was a nice guy. Wish I remembered his name. While all this jamming was going on, Jamie was in the living room playing Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. She totally killed it! She almost beat the entire game in one sitting, and she had a crowd of fans all her own as she jumped, flew, bounced, bleeped, and otherwise taught those wicked little turtles who was boss. She was bouncing off their heads like Mario's butt was a turtle magnet. That's what I said, butt was a turtle magnet. It was pretty impressive.

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