#thinksink

[craneca]

[jeffrauschl]

Check out Dave Foley: https://soundcloud.com/davefoleyjr 31 JAN 2014 Let me finish January's Song of the Month Posts with Dave Foley found over on Sound Cloud! I hope someday some people find my list of musical discoveries and follow.

[rachelalindsay]

New Song Coming Out

Whose got a song dropping in an album tomorrow? This guy. 

[rachelalindsay]

So...I got this song you should hear.

[katgattiphotos-blog]

You asked for it...

[thinksinkwords]

Throwdown: Atlas Anatomy

Getting the invite to play up in Parksville was a big deal to us back then. The band would be "on tour" for the first time and we could even try out some of our new songs on folks who weren't strictly our poor patient and supportive friends. I had been up to the venue, Moose Hall, before and knew it could get busy on the weekends. We were ecstatic. There was also this gig we had up in Cumberland at the Treetop Tavern, which I had half convinced myself was a practical joke but Danny swore was real. The town was rundown even by 'couver Island standards and the stage we would be playing on had chicken wire in front of it, like that scene in the Blues Brothers movie. I kept imagining that same scene except with only five guys sitting there throwing the bottles at us, three of which were too old or drunk to even loft them all the way to the stage. I had driven up and down 19 enough to know there was nothing and no one there. The excitement drained away before we even entered the building for the Parksville gig, which was disastrous. There was a minor rat scare before we went on. Some guy rushed the stage and tried to club Vin with his own bass. The electricity cut out at one point. Two women started shoving each other halfway through our second set before taking it outside, only to take it back inside and ultimately onstage. Worst, Cooper couldn't keep a beat for shit the whole time. Cooper had moved to Duncan and met all of us a few months beforehand. Coincidentally he played the drums, but I always wondered if he hadn't just said that to keep hanging around us, though if so, he was committed to the lie since he had the equipment. Our previous drummer Kyle had unexpectedly shot himself the week before we met Coop, so we let him join, mostly out of convenience for everyone. Danny blamed himself for Kyle's death because of his depressing lyrics, but I'm very confident Kyle paid no more attention to Danny's singing than I did. I didn't know what the hell the lyrics were and neither did Kyle. With the Parksville gig failure still so raw, our date with Cumberland took on a hefty importance as we packed the gear into the van. Well, focusing on the gig helped relieve at least some of the palpable tension everyone in the van was feeling with Cooper anyway. I was pissed about his drumming too, but mostly couldn’t escape the dread that Danny was already writing a terrible song about it in his head. Cooper wasn't helping, complaining nonstop about how the fighting women had tumbled into his trap kit without ever acknowledging that it had largely made no difference in his performance. I was driving and really thought Vin was going to lose it on Coop just when the shepherd suddenly appeared. I may have been distracted by the argument, but I still swear that dog just materialized on the highway before us. I braked hard and braced for the thump, leaped from the van and ran to where she was lying, whimpering in a snowbank. Her back was broken, and the problem clearly ran deeper than the vertebrae given how her hind legs were jerking around. I hoped Vin had packed his 20 gauge just to make this easier. Glancing back to the vehicle to call for Vin, I instead found Cooper at my side. He leaned down and petted the dog tenderly before retreating quickly to the van. I shrugged and waited, vaguely wondering if it was possible to drown a dog in snow, before Coop returned with an armload of items: drumsticks, guitar strings, a jacket, some amp cables, and I swear I remember him with a cupholder from the van. God knows what else. Vin offered to be creative even without the 20 gauge, though I assumed he was just speaking metaphorically about Cooper. I would have been fine with it either way, but Cooper managed to utilize his unconventional tools to secure the girl's spine and make her feel comfortable enough to ride along with minimal whimpering as we kept heading north. It was hard to stay on Coop's case after his impressive display of highway veterinarian skills, which obviously annoyed the hell out of Vin. Danny was still scribbling in his notebook, no doubt composing a double album about dogs and spinal cords. And of course the show was awful, somehow worse than the night before. The Treetop had even fewer people in it than I had imagined, which may have been why no one complained when the dog started barking nonstop after our third song. I was still feeling strange about the whole encounter with her on the highway and how she was lying there onstage, but then I noticed something about the intervals between her barks: that dog had more rhythm than fucking Cooper did.

-Adam