Hey all. Looks like it’s been quite some time since I wrote a blog just for blogging’s sake. To any newcomers, I’m usually only talking about music-and-pop-culture things besides whatever I’m doing at the time. You’re not gonna find celebrity gossip or conspiracy theories. Well, other than the Monkees conspiracy that Chris and I are positive we’ve uncovered, maybe. :::shifts eyes nervously:::

I guess I got caught up in the promotion for Losing Salt, Sex Times Three and the RetroLowFi compilation, as well as spending as much time as possible with my family… I didn’t even think about blogging. Now that I’m actually sitting down and making time for one, I have no idea what to talk about. I’m looking at the screen and keyboard like a dog being shown a card trick.

I suppose I could tell you that I’m listening to an incredible-yet-echoey bootleg of one the last shows by Helium. That group is certainly one of my favorite sort of “unsung” artists. They never recorded a note of material that I wasn’t crazy about, but no one else I know seems to appreciate them on the same level. How anyone can’t be blown away by Mary Timony’s just-woken-up vocals and the way that they seamlessly mixed with medieval guitar scales under a shoegaze atmosphere is absolutely beyond me. Maybe I should make a few really good and concise Helium mixtapes for some friends, try to get this music to seep into the collective consciousness somehow? Boy, I’m glad that I bought all of their vinyl before Matador stopped taking orders for them in ‘98.

Speaking of vinyl, this weekend I’m buying one of these beauties with some money I was given for my birthday. I very nearly got a pretty nice iPod, but I’ve already got two much smaller mp3 players, and I don’t really see the need for more than that. I did briefly entertain the idea of recording some full-band backing tracks on one of them and playing over them at live shows, but that *really* seemed like cheating. I dunno. The turntable makes way more sense for me, and it’ll probably make me much happier in the long run. It’s hard to convince me that even the nicest digital rip of any album can possibly come close to my Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab vinyl pressing of Dark Side Of The Moon, and especially on a player like that!

Uh, let’s see. Besides that, my wife and I have either been sick or had oral surgery alternately for the last few weeks – we’re feeling much better now – so we’ve taken to having marathon vieweings of some of our favorite DVD box sets. Recently it’s been Lost season 5, Weeds season five and Arrested Development season 3. If left to my own devices, I’ll watch police/jail shows for days on end, not even realizing that time is passing. You know, Lockup, Lockdown, Inside American Jail, Cops, and Campus P.D.. My wife puts up with it very nicely, as she has the same penchant herself, but with Doctor Who.

I’ve been putting off seeing the Star Wars prequels since the very first one came out. I was afraid that the rumors were true that these films were bad enough to ruin Star Wars for a fan forever. Turns out that I didn’t really dislike Phantom Menace, nor did I think it was exceptionally good. It just sort of existed. The second one was a muddled mess of squirrel vomit that I do not wish to discuss. We watched about half of the Sith movie, but my wife fell asleep and I got bored. I still like the Star Wars Holiday Special best.

Here are the 5 most played albums in our living room during the last week: Laura Veirs – “July Flame“; Frank Zappa – “The Man From Utopia“; The Vaselines – “Enter The Vaselines“; Pink Floyd – “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (mono)”; Retribution Gospel Choir – “2“.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I expect to start recording new material pretty soon. I’ve got quite a few new songs written, but the recording bug hasn’t really bit me yet. I think the songs are pretty good. At first I felt really uncomfortable with some of them because I fear change and these songs were a bit more mature than many of my older records, sometimes. I hope no one is expecting the next album to just be wall to wall pop, because I’m not sure that I’ll ever be back to that singular formula again. Trying to keep in mind all of the truly great albums jump around from style to style with differing production values between each track and really hoping that I can make one some day. I’ll keep everyone posted on the progress via Facebook and twitter, like most others are doing these days.

Hope you all are enjoying the free albums I put out on Christmas and my birthday and that you stay warm.

Love on ya,
Marc