Lunar E - Thursday December 7 2000    

You should have seen the mists blowing in from the west at 5pm tonight. They were like ghosts. I wanted to befriend them, if only to be protected from the many evil forces of Los Angeles.

One such force is my supplemental property tax bill, which arrived in the mail today. It's an unexpected additional $1500 out of my yearly income. Now I really do need a raise! Where the fuck do the Taco Bell employees live in this city?

I was playing around with my four track again this evening, starting out by laying down monotonous bass tracks before proceeding on to guitar. Being mostly a guitar guy, I hadn't been working this way in the past, but it's occurred to me that this is probably the best way to develop a composition when I have no initial ideas for how to proceed. I'm the sort of person who needs to have feedback that my effort is paying off without much time invested, otherwise I quickly become discouraged. That's why I love web pages so much. A tiny investment of effort and ten minutes later the whole world can read!

The song I'm making is called "Christine is in Denial." It's very crude still and not yet available for download.

On occasion readers send me their music (or the music they like), and I usually listen once, shrug my shoulders and move on to my usual tired old crap. But yesterday this guy Derek Osgood, a reader since 1996, suggested I listen to his band Lunar Event over on MP3.com. So I was like, whatever, and gave it a whirl. It's sort of a rock and roll-based Electronica, or "Rocktronica," with a discernable boy-girl Human League influence. The first song is excellent on first approach, if only for the interplay of vocals and what sounds like a bassoon that is later almost unnoticeably replaced by bass. There's also a wickedly-clever subversion of clichés in the lyrics. I liked it so much that I listened to it a good dozen times in a row before moving on to other things. The CD as a whole is really strong and coherent, in a traditional Pink Floyd sort of way. The only weak track (at least for now) is number 3, "Glide." One of Lunar Event's greatest strengths is its ability to take some sort of barely-tolerable musical idea and coax it into something beautiful. For a good example of this, check out track #6 "Vacancy." I hope I can convince Bathtubgirl to play it a lot on her webcasts. Say what you want to about Bathtubgirl, she's a web celebrity and media powerhouse, and she's only just getting started!

Tonight John was all cranked up on his newly-filled prescription of ADD medication and he could overhear me playing Lunar Event upstairs.
"Hey Gus," he asked, "What is this?"
"Oh it's this band Lunar Event, an internet friend's band."
"I really like it. Can we burn a copy?"
"Sure."