SOME STUFF I DID IN THE LAST YEAR
Prepare yourselves for a massive post, the likes of which this page will almost surely never see again.
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Last year for Halloween, I was a hastily-put-together, poor imitation of Schmillson-era Harry Nilsson:
Why mention this? Because later that night I walked into Automatic Space as Chicago's horror/blackened prog/fusion/Zeuhl band GA'AN were playing sans bass player. (I later found out he walked off stage mid-set, only to come back and tackle their drummer.) I took note of this conspicuous absence and tried to enjoy my night.
(GA'AN before your narrator joined. Photo: Tim Lundmark)
A couple days later I wrote to a Ga'an address and asked if they needed a bass player. Along with several other people in attendance that fateful night, I tried out, and was awarded the post. Instead of only playing bass, I was also told to bring along a couple of synths. Lindsay Powell, whom previously only handled vocals, also added a couple keyboards and Ga'an became a three-piece.
Thus ensued several months of nearly all-day-long jam/writing/rehearsing sessions, which culminated in two Chicago shows (with Cacaw; White Car; Positive Shadow; and Stress Ape) and a recording session with Nick Broste at The Shape Shoppe.
(GA'AN tracking at the Shape Shoppe. Photo: Nick Broste)
Somewhere in there I also hosted the first recital for my piano and guitar students at the University Club of Chicago:
(Max and I jammin' on Jovi/Sambora's immortal "Livin' On A Prayer". Photo: Leslie D.)
Then I went on an awesome and much needed vacation to Park City, Utah with my awesome girlfiend, Leslie, where, among other activities, we visited the incredible LDS temple and I checked out the rad organ in the tabernacle:
(Your narrator in the acoustically-perfect Mormon Tabernacle. Photo by Leslie D. This organ has 11,623 pipes, 147 voices (tone colors) and 206 ranks (rows of pipes).) The nearby LDS conference center also has a gnarly organ:
(Schoenstein organ at the Conference Center. Photo by me. This one has 7667 pipes, and the building itself seats 22,000 Latter Day Saints.)
We drove around the mountains with Bryan LeSueur, my spiritual and musical brother, recently married:
(Bryan and I chillin' (literally!!!) in front of some lake in Utah, chewin' mad Cacao nibs. Photo by Leslie.)
Bryan and I have known each other since our hardcore days (1994-2002) at Koos Arts Cafe, the all-ages DIY venue in Santa Ana, California. We later hooked up to form, with Dallas Gaines, a psychedelic improv band called Sutherland (aka Don Sutherland aka Karl Malone: A Tribute To Weird "Al" Yankovic), which lasted from 2004 until I moved to Chicago in May of 2005. Sutherland still exists when we're all in the same location, and it should be known that Magical Beautiful most certainly would not exist in nearly as interesting a form as it does now were it not for my musical explorations with Bryan. (If you're one of the few that owns "Summers Are Better Than Others" then you've heard a little bit of Sutherland.)
As soon as we got back from Utah, I resumed rehearsals for Magical Beautiful and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's spring tour. Magical Beautiful had only toured once before (in a much different, 3-piece lineup); I had completed three previous tours with Casiotone (two 6-weekers in Europe and one 1-weeker around South By Southwest), and I had done months of touring with Head Of Femur, but, this trip was by far the most grueling. The previous Casiotone tours on which I played had been mostly Owen Ashworth playing solo sets with just 7-10 full-band songs tacked on at the end. These shows would feature Magical Beautiful (along with Nick Tamburro of the brilliant Dead Science) backing CFTPA on his full set of 15-16 songs, in addition to opening the shows with our own 30-minute set.
(Maybe the best director of all time - Andrei Tarkovsky - reps for MB and CFTPA. Drawing by Owen Ashworth)
MB was touring in support of Not Building A Wall But Making A Brick", a full-length cassette of studio-improvised electronic improvisations that we released in December, 2009. CFTPA was touring in support of his fifth and final album, Vs Children
We'd load in all our gear, soundcheck with Casiotone, break that gear down, soundcheck with Magical Beautiful, break that gear down so the openers could play, do an MB set for 30 minutes, break down that gear, set up for Casiotone, then immediately play with CFTPA for an hour. The tour was only three weeks, but the dual band thing, coupled with unexpectedly-low turnouts in the South made it exhausting. While a good time was had and much was accomplished, I won't be touring in both bands at the same time again unless there is a break between the two sets.
One great thing that happened, playing night after night, is Magical Beautiful got real good as a band.
(Alance tunes his drums at the attic "venue" in which we played in Syracuse, NY. Hottest/smelliest show of tour.)
(Charlie and I enjoy the rare (for the United States) artist hospitality at The Bottletree in Birmingham, AL. Two decked-out Airstream trailers all to ourselves.
(Charlie takes a load off in New York.)
(Your narrator creep-chillin' at Niagara Falls, NY.)
(My best friend Brigid provides the post-show snacks in Durham, North Carolina.)
(We stayed on a farm in Amherst, Massachussets. Here's Nick and Alance takin' in that fresh Northeastern air.)
(Owen and I take out our poorly-promoted-show aggression on a cinder block in Athens, Georgia.)
(Your narrator shredding at sound-check in Memphis, Tennessee as Broste looks on. Photo by Charlie.)
(Gettin' some crab cakes and beers in Portland, Maine. From back-to-front: Owen, Broste, Alance, Tyson. Photo: Charlie.)
(Casiotone For The Painfully Alone live in Syracuse. Nick Tamburro, Nick Broste and Owen Ashworth. Photo: Charlie.)
(Nick T and I celebrating after a good merch night in Syracuse. Ganja supplied by locals, photo by Charlie.)
(Magical Beautiful live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo: Nate Borek).
GA'AN was on a bit of a break after I got back as Seth and Lindsay toured and recorded with their respective solo projects Psychic Steel and Fielded, so Magical Beautiful began the long process of finishing our first full-band album, "Here Come The Wild Waves". This was a project I started back in 2007. The first time I realized it would take longer than I hoped, I released an EP called
(Nick and Alance at the Shape Shoppe. February, 2009-ish?)
I had always wanted to mix programmed drums with live drums, so back in 2007 I took the plunge and purchased an MPC1000. 2562-indebted album. I made a dub-solo black metal version of Mount Eerie's "Flaming Home". I abused the shit out of the MIDI protocol.
Thankfully, it got warm again, and with the musical help and encouragement of my band-mates and peers, we finished the album, and it came out far grander than I could have ever conceived. Hear how we finally made "Flaming Home" our own:
Magical Beautiful - flaming home (mount eerie) by ihearanewworld
Here's a song called "Purest Place" that must have gone through 6 or 7 different versions before we ended up with this:
Magical Beautiful - purest place by ihearanewworld
(Note, Here Come The Wild Waves is nearly seamless, which means that when listening to individual tracks, they will cut off in unexpected ways. Guess you'll have to get the full album to hear it as intended. Also, these streams are at a near-unacceptable 128kbps... go to the soundcloud site to hear them at a better quality.)
Oh yeah, back in May, I turned 30, which has been both wonderful and terrifying. Leslie put together a wonderful celebration for me, which included a pinata stuffed with personalized yo-yo's and whatnots.
(Your narrator with his slaughtered pinata on 05.30.10)
(Stumblin' through the Mummy Smoke. Chris Schreck of the mighty Icy Demons photographs)
Also: it was Mike Elsener's birthday, and he was in town from Omaha! Mike is one of my best friends ever and a very talented musician with whom I played many shows in the once-hyped, ambitious orchestral pop band Head Of Femur. Mike was also a very early member of Magical Beautiful (on drums, guitar and voc als) and now has his own lightly-psychedellic soft-rock project called Shipbuilding Co. Also, we briefly formed a light-prog band tentatively called Pangaea, a metal band called Texas Holocaust and collaborated on a record for Zeek Sheck. When I was debating whether or not to move from California to Chicago, I answered a Musician Wanted ad on Craigslist (for the first and only time in my life) - Head Of Femur, a band of whom I had heard, were looking for a touring keyboard player. Mike and I began speaking on the phone; I'm not sure of what we spoke, but our conversations would go into the hour-long range. I tried to send Mike and the other two lead Femurs (Matt Focht and Ben Armstrong) several mp3's of my piano playing to prove I was worthy of the post, but they couldn't figure out how to make them play. However, when Mike found out that we shared a birthday, he said, "It's official - you're in the band." Soon thereafter, on May 28, 2005, I arrived at Midway Airport on the south side of Chicago. Matt Focht was there with his father, Gary, and two days later, in the backyard of the house in which I still live, Mike and I shared a birthday party (me: 25, Mike: 29). Before my plane landed two days earlier, I didn't know a soul, but here I was at a party full of friendly, talented, accomplished musicians and artists celebrating my birth. Thank you, Chicago.
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And with that, readers, I'm done. The past 12 months have certainly yielded more than I could ever write about here, and though I'm tempted, I'll never finish this post if its attempted.
