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I was offered the opportunity to be a part of yesterday’s BOADRUM 9 in Troy NY, and turned it down…to remain on daddy duty.

Boredoms. 9 drummers. Me backstage with EYE.

Instead, it was blanched broccoli, Elmo diapers, repeated readings of The Little Island, and gauging how many inches I can actually pinch these days.

Cooley dispatched intermittent and rabid media files my way last night. Here are some of them:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cooley (and his companions Herb and Tanner) are planning to write all about it, so I’ll leave it to them to tell you how awesome and life-changing it was. I’ll just go pre-rinse some cloth diapers instead.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At home, that’d be on channel 17. In person, that’d be at 294 N Winooski Ave in the BTV.

These events have a way of finding their way onto your back and biting your ear.  Yeah, I spent years alone in my crappy bedroom thinking I was the only person in the world smart enough to realize the virtues (ok, I wasn’t smart enough to know that word back then) of both KISS and the Beatles, and with help from my tormentive (is that a word) classmates I hid my obsessions of BOTH bands.  Now they come onto my iPod and I relish each minute I get.  How is it 20 years later I still find the same satisfaction from both “I Am The Walrus” and “Goin’ Blind”?

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because I’m fucking smart, and the only stupid thing I’ve really done that caused massive wastes of time and money was listening to tasteless idiots dictate (vaguely…I mean, I did keep listening to KISS and The Beatles alone in my room all weekend for years instead of getting  short spiky rich-kid haircuts with OP jams and Banana Republic t-shirts…oh, who am I kidding: if my parents could have afforded them I would have taken them…except for the jams) what I listened to.  For fuck’s sake, in February ’86 I saw the video for “Rise” by PiL and got caught by some dumb hick girl singing the chorus to myself.  She told me I was a geek and the lyrics were stupid.  Great.  How many years could I have saved if I’d discovered “Metal Box” at 13?

Anyway.  Don’t let Joe-87-spiky-cut-guy laugh at you for buying that copy of “Billion Dollar Babies” (or it’s equivalent).  Once around early-’86 these kids in the Peterborough Town Library made fun of me for taking out the soundtrack to the movie “Popeye”.  I felt pretty lame at the time, but guess what?  The music was by Harry Nilsson and the movie was directed by Robert Altman.  Those kids were listening to the shit radio music that only southern NH could offer them (from Boston, actually) while I was delving in dual genius.  “He Needs Me”?  FUCK THOSE GUYS. A motto for all.

I love you, Ashley.

May is going to be a busy month around here.  Finishing up the School Bus ”Blue Button” CD, mixing some Kochalka tracks, finishing up the Kochalka album, preparing for the very first School Bus live performance (May 17, w/ Swale at Radio Bean), Kochalka gig opening for Mike Watt (May 3, Higher Ground), tooth extraction (May 16), and finally, picking up Led LO/CO at the airport (always a fun job) and driving them to their marathon gigs at Red Square (May 9) and Nectar’s (May 24).

James Kochalka depicts me in his comics as a dog with a robot brain.  When we went to Oklahoma last year (which has become the subject of a tune on ”Blue Button”) we were presented by a girlie named Heather Peanut with sculptures of our characters.  Thanks, Heather.

So, no raincoat. Oh well. Towed car. Oh well. It’s snowing here, cold, wet and white, but in 12 hours I’ll be sipping a yellow beer in San Jose, and in the following days swim in both the Caribbean and the Pacific … what’ve I got to complain about? Right. So I take it slow today … I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow, I learn by going where to go. Fine. I shower slowly, and shave meticulously, a close shave that I seem to think will last longer .… it’s so quiet when you’re doing this, looking at yourself in the mirror for so long, quite a personal and often reflective time … steam obfuscating the edges of clarity … I started wondering if terrorists, if practicing shavers, did this before a big event … then I started thinking about 9/11, if Atta shaved or not, and if he did, what was he thinking about in a hazy hotel bathroom looking at himself in the mirror, and then I figured I should stop thinking like this because it’ll wind up freaking me out.

So instead I came up here to write a quick entry, drink a cup’o, and listen to Miles and company. I hope April treats you right, intrepid reader.

Better yet, I hope no one else has the gaudy pompousness to call you “intrepid reader” for a long time after this moment.

And be careful when you feed the pigeons. Bohumil Hrabal fell out of his window and died upon the cobblestones of Prague when attempting to do the very same thing.

Here’s a review from this week’s Seven Days:

E_O, LACUNA
(Icebox Records, 3-inch CD)

Burlington’s Icebox Records continues its monthly 3-inch CD series with another dreamy, beautiful collection of understated art-pop. At the plate this time is label co-founder Eric Olsen, masquerading as E_O, who uses his 20 minutes to craft a solid, albeit bleak, string of tunes.

Shifting away from the extended drones and ethereal feedback exercises of the first 3-inch, School Bus’ Painless, Olsen focuses on his quiet, poetic songs. Yet, instead of simply plopping down a few mopey pop tunes, he uses recurring themes and finely crafted instrumental passages to weave the pieces into a glorious, unified whole.

“31” gets things going with plucked acoustic guitars, lazy keys and a soft mechanical drum beat. Olsen’s warm vocals lull the listener into the tune, revealing the layers of finely crafted instrumentation.

After two minutes, the song dissolves into the humid electric guitars and light-handed drumming of “Filling the Space.” “You stay up with the T.V.,” Olsen sings, “You hear me in the drive/You calculate the time I wait outside.” Reciting the lines, Olsen’s plaintive vocals are filled with a desperate melancholy.

“Come in Three” is a 4-minute instrumental passage built upon a simple electric guitar lick and repetitive bass line. Into the mix fly a mass of sampled conversations and found sounds, creating a deep, headphone-ready interlude.

The centerpiece of the album is the 5-and-a-half-minute “Ludlow.” A haunting drug anthem, it is the album’s strongest point, an immensely powerful piece of pop.

“I followed you into the bedroom with a ceiling of stars,” Olsen sings tenderly over sustained organ chords. “You traced a line along my arm/Cartography of arteries/A subway map that no one reads.” As the tune rises, humming cello notes enter, echoing the growing emotion of Olsen’s tale. “I didn’t come this far, just to see her face on the bowl of my spoon,” he dryly recites. “It’s hard to con her face, when I see it on every mark under the moon.”

Like any 3-inch, the disc is unsettlingly brief, but the simple power of Olsen’s songs is nothing short of stunning. Lacuna is a record that should not be missed, and is another leap forward for Icebox Records.