I am ranting like a fool

Ladies and Gentlemen, Don't forget to brush your teeth. And don't forget to come see Almost Awake at Red Square TONIGHT! 5pm! We're playing for happy hour. We haven't played at red square in about 20 hundred ages, so we're quite excited. Also, we can walk to the show!! How awesome is that? You should come, because we love you, but not in a sexual way, unless you buy us gifts and become our groupies. ::cough:: anyway.

Tomorrow we're playing in Spencertown, NY for the hidden garden tours which benefit Spencertown Academy. They have a little craft and local goods market for the event, which is where you can find us, because we are, afterall, the farmer's market band. Dave and I wonder how this happened, but then we remember that we went on a 31 town farmer's market tour, and the wondering is quickly extiguished.

Oh, you should come to that show too.

We're not recording on monday because our engineer/co-producer is being swallowed by a bubbling tar-pit of corporate beauracratic poo, in which he is forced to be on call 24 hours a day in a quite undesirable manner so that some higher-up somewhere can relax on a Carribean beach, i'm sure. So, there you are. He's being crushed under the clown-shoe of Capitalism to the point that he is powerless even to stick it to the man (like Jesus did).

Think about that while you eat your tobacco-comapny-owned morningstar black-bean veggie burger in the name of degreasing your carbon footprint.

Why is it now cool to be eco-friendly? It's like when you buy a band's CD and a song is your favorite and then it becomes a single and then you feel as if it was stolen from you, and you're now just part of the mainstream with no claim to the fact that you were there first. That's how I feel about the recent 'being green' development in this country. i should be glad that my favorite song is popular, but instead i'm sulking over the fact that it's no longer special, just a flavor of the week on the top 40 station.

Apparently i have things to talk about that are un-related to music, and you are reading this because you want to know about Almost Awake's shows and general activities as musicians...so I'll try to get back to that.

We sat in with Sirsy on te 4th of july at Christies on the Lake in Lake George (don't try to park in lake George on the 4th of july if you have to lug equiptment, because Guatemala will seem like a short stroll away compared to the distance you'll have to walk from your car to your destination). It was pretty much a dream come true. I don't have much to say because i'll just gush, and i don't want to gush. The summary is that Dave and I played three songs with Melanie and Rich: Sirsy's "Waiting for Rain", "Round Here" by the Counting Crows, and "Wonderwall" by Oasis. I got to sing leads on "Waiting for Rain", which was pretty intimidating with Melanie right next to me playing drums, and I goofed the ending, but everyone in the audience was really drunk and really enjoying themselves, so it was ok, and you wouldn't have known unless you knew the song. "Round Here" and "Wonderwall" were both interesting because Dave played drums and Mel's kit for acoustic shows is really minimal, there aren't any toms, and almost all of the fills dave expected to include in the songs involve the toms, so he had to think on his feet and be creative. It was definately a cool experience to figure out how to play the songs together was we went, seeing as none of us had practiced them in advance. It was entirely a team effort, and the first time i'd played with a full band in a just singing type of arrangement. I'm still not really over it. Also, Rich showed me how to play the bridge to "Waiting for Rain", so in theory Dave and I are going to resume working on covering it.

In othe news, I'm seeing fireworks three times this week. And playing Bocce. And Sirsy rocks. And you should come to our shows. And rain can't spoil the fun unless the fun is in the form of an outdoor sugar sculpture.

Twinkle.

C