The City Veins

Tomorrow night we make our debut in New York at the Lions Den. We go on around 9:30. We hope to see as many of you out there that can make. I will entice you by saying that we have had some band tension recently, and there might be the chance that you can see us fight on stage! In fact, if we get enough people out I promise that I will start a fight on stage, probably with Adam.

It is with some trepidation that I return to New York. That city and I just don’t seem to get along. The last time that I played in New York, all of my band’s guitars and basses were stolen. While stolen equipment is something that every band goes through, it is not a lot of fun to pull up in front of a club and find out that you have no way to play your set. I will just note that none of the drums were stolen, which I used as an excuse to not move my drummer’s crap. If thieves won’t even take it, than you know it is too heavy and unwieldy. There have been other incidents as well, which I won’t go into, but let us hope that this trip goes better.

Aaron and I posted a few demos on our garageband site… www.garageband.com/artist/thecityveins for your feedback/listening. “Scream” and “Gratitude”. The myspace site now has Scream available. www.myspace.com/cityveins
The songs are rough, have no bass or drums, and are basically just a new way of writing and figuring out songs using modern technology. It shows people the process of writing, and recording, and how different parts of songs can add or take away from a song. Or it just shows that we like our new songs and want to listen to them while we’re at work on the internet. Either way, enjoy and give some feedback.

Yeah you, go see live music. I realize that it is more than a little self serving that I write this, but let me implore you to go out and see more live music. I am not referring to whoever is at the 930 club, or Verizon Center, or whatever, but I want more people to take a chance and just head to the Velvet Lounge, or DC9, or the Red and the Black without knowing who is playing.

For example, when this band first started, Aaron and Adam and I went to DC9 on a whim. We had no idea who was playing and we just wanted to get back into the music scene, get the feeling of hanging out in small rock clubs again. On that night we happened to catch Prabir and the Substitutes, a band that we have become pretty big fans of, have played with, and hope to play with again in the future.

I went and saw my friend Joe’s band Inner Loop on Friday at the Red and the Black and unfortunately there were not a lot of people there, which is a shame. They put on a really good show, a lot of loops and samples, combined with some serious Jazz improvisation. More to the point, I caught the opener, The Vampire Monkeys. They do a similar jazz looping thing. What was fun was that because there were not many people there, the band just decided to go real experimental, and it was pretty exciting.

Also, the guitarist in The Vampire Monkeys, John Lee, might just be the best guitarist in DC right now. I don’t really get into guitar solos, but John really had me floored at certain points in his set. What impressed me more was that he joined Inner Loop, and did an excellent job of fitting in and accenting the music. There are not a lot of guitarists who can play both the lead and supporting role as well as John did.

Finally, I caught Corn Mo’s last song at the Palace of Wonders on Saturday, and was sufficiently impressed that I regretted missing the whole set. My friends and I decided that his music is a mixture of Meatloaf and Axl Rose, except more awesome than you imagine right now.

So these are the highlights from my recent random concert experiences. There will be plenty of disappointments along the way, lord knows that I have seen some sets that are so band you have to wonder if you are watching performance art. But if you take a chance, I bet you are more likely to be surprised and impressed than not. There are a lot of great musicians in this town. Worse comes to worse, you are out $8.00 or so. So go see live music.

Tonight we are playing at Chief Ike’s in Adams Morgan. We are playing with First Rays and Prabir and the Substitutes, two very cool bands. As an interesting side note, 3/4’s of First Rays played in a band with Adam in the 8th grade called Incubus. I like the think that the more popular Incubus was inspired by them. I am also hoping that we can get them drunk enough to have a brief, one night only, reunion. Honestly, I think Adam might have peaked as a musician in the 8th grade anyway.

So come on out. The show starts at 9:00. The order is First Rays, Prabir and the Substitutes, and then us. If you don’t like the music, come and soak in the ambiance and wonder, “George Stephanopoulos and the Clinton staffers use to come here?”

So yesterday Aaron and I went to see Bloc Party at Constitution Hall, since both of us were too lame to see them at Black Cat or 9:30 the last time they came around. It was nice to see Kele (the lead singer) on the same stage where Aaron and Charles and I all graduated high school 9 years ago. The band stormed through their small catalogue of songs and truly amazed me with their reconstruction of their somewhat overly produced latest album, A Weekend in the City. Russell Lissack, the withdrawn heroin abused-looking guitarist, was fucking amazing. I’ve never seen anyone put so many seemingly lame 80s effects and phasers to such powerful and precise use. They played for a pretty long set, leaving nothing untouched–including the crowd, when the singer jumped into the sea of people towards the end of the night. It’s not hard to see why this band has been heralded for their live performances. Grinding it out on the road has obviously paid off and it’s good to see a band who cares about building a fanbase before selling records succeeding. The original opening band, The Maccabees, was dealing with visa issues, so we got to hear a few songs by Annuals beforethe Noisettes came on for 45 minutes and annoyingly shrieked and jumped around in obnoxious outfits. Their drummer is their saving grace, he looks like grizzley adams on acid. Some people liked them but I had already seen them open for TV on the Radio a few weeks ago and definitely did not need to hear them or TV on the Radio again. (Sorry, Charles and Aaron…and sorry for any future comments about Stevie Wonder also sucking.)

On to CityVeins news….Aaron and I recorded a pretty solid song yesterday, most of the music, minus vocals. From start to finish we worked for about 2 hours laying down four guitar tracks and backing vocals along with song arrangement. We’ll probably do the bass and lead vocals today and continue working this week on songs that are currently in our head or on my computer’s sound recording device. For anyone who actually cares, we used Aaron’s Rickenbacker for the rhythm guitar, and the Fender Telesonic for the lead parts. Aaron layered my Taylor acoustic underneath for some percussive background chords to give the song some body. The result is a very cool songs, with nods to Bowie, Radiohead, Wilco, Buckley, and I guess Pearl Jam….lots of noise but also some pretty nice melodies.

Tarr started writing lyrics to Oh, Backwards since he is now admitting to growing tired of making up lyrics to three of our songs when we play live. I reminded him that the other two songs have had finished lyrics for a month or so. Now the fun task of memorizing them. We have a bunch more demos to work through so it should be a busy week/weekend/summer. Aaron’s last day of work is today and mine is in two weeks then we have a full summer of music, sleeping, relaxing, and whatever else we fill our day with. Probably a lot of it will consist of watching Behind the Music and Classic Albums episodes, wondering why Bono is such an ass and why anyone likes the Grateful Dead.

This is probably the most boring blog post yet, but I was totally bored myself and figured I’d update the internet with our latest happenings. We’re playing at Chief Ike’s in Adams Morgan this Thursday with First Rays (www.firstrays.net) and Prabir and the Substitutes (www.prabirandthesubstitutes.com) . Come check us out.