Shoot the Messenger, Measure his Wingspan...

The show this last Saturday went off awesomely, thanks everyone that came out. I certainly felt alot more comfortable behind the decks this time than I did at the Solstice Sessions... though you wouldn't be able to tell from the pictures- Pictures which I will post here once I have more of them. I wasn't able to do a demo release like I was hoping to, but I unveiled my logo (thanks Justin!) and shirt (which was done up courtesy of my dear friend Bella and her friend Rafael. Thanks guys!).


I'm feeling under the weather again, which is pretty ridiculous. I've been getting a cold what seems like every 5-6 weeks since Winter began. Perhaps I should stop eating poorly and staying out all night every weekend and partying. PERHAPS.

I listened to a few episodes of This American Life at work today to pass the time. It's really a great show. Though I think I am like the last person to find out about it.

Tonight I am going to see Buck 65 at Alix Goolden Hall, with Cadence Weapon and Skratch Bastid. I have been waiting for Buck to come back to Victoria for like 2 or 3 years now, so I'm very excited about tonight. He's pretty much one of my favourite acts going right now. Go check out Davis' blog for some video clips of him in action if you've never heard him before. You'll be glad you did!

...Ahem.

I had a hiatus. My bad.

I have been working for the last week and a half, thus (hopefully) officially ending my 4+ month unemployment streak. It was a good run, and I'm very proud of everything that I didn't accomplish, but I need fun time party money for the summer. And I like eating. I'm temping at Greater Victoria Savings for a couple weeks, at which point i'll need to find another job, and quickly. I'm doing data entry. It is boring. Clearly, that makes me boring. A boring man, who enters data on a computer. Let me tell you about my life.

Andrew's Massive Summer Plans: I'm signed on to work and possibly play several large festivals around BC, including VEMF, Entheos,Soundwave, and Shambhala. I'm incredibly excited to be able to do this, as it has always given me infinitely more pleasure to be a part of the creation of large events like these, rather than a participant. I'll mostly be doing security during VEMF and Entheos, so I'm going to be getting special training this weekend on how to calm people who are too high on drugs, AKA Psy-crisis training. It should be very interesting. The big hurdle in all of this is making sure I can afford it. But, I also know it will work out. Because it is meant to. Zen.

We had a rare gathering of the infamous Quadra gang at the Rainbow House last night, which included myself, Justin, Colin, Davis, and Jason. It always feels like a big event when we manage to get together, like that picture Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill all hangin' out. Like when we part ways, some important shit will have been settled. But we mostly just get drunk, and try and relive the past. Which makes me sad. I think we've reached that point- or maybe just I have- where I've changed who I am so much that I can't relate to my old friends anymore. There's always this uneasiness when the conversation remains in the present, or strays towards the future, so we all retreat into the comfortable past. Of old conflicts, old movies made, and the good times of high school. Which is all well and good, and I speak of it fondly for the most part, but then the old group dynamic comes back into play. The one where we undermine eachother's confidence and I end the night feeling kinda bad about myself. And I end the night wondering when we're gonna collectively stop living in our pasts and actually create something new that we can dwell on in 7 years time. Because if we're still talking about that hilarious Time Travel movie we made and how our media teacher screwed us...well.

I'd just like to take this time to throw a random shout-out to the people I've been spending much of my days with lately. I'm not gonna list of any names, but you are all awesome, and have helped me grow so much over the last several months. I only hope that I've given something back, in some way or another. Because I can be pretty fuckin' lifeless sometimes.

My next gig is on Saturday, May 3rd, at the Sunset Room for the Sunset Sessions. It's going to be a fundraiser for Mr. Shayne Avec I Grec, to aid him in his travels. I'm fuckin' stoked. A) Because it will be the first time I've played an official show at the venue that I've put much of my energy into for the last year and B) Because I'll be playing alongside all my fellow Returning Saturn kin, whom are some of my favoritest peeps in the world right now. The show starts at 10, I go on at 11, and I hope you can all make it out and show some love. Plus, I'll hopefully be unveling my logo and releasing my first demo. Fingers crossed. I'll post up the flyer here soon as I get my hands on it.

Goodnight, and good luck.

Measuring the Speed of Pun

Whew, what a weekend.

She all started on Wednesday, with the eclipse. I basically only watched the part where the moon turned orange, which was neat (it looked like the sun, but I could stare at it!), but I quickly lost interest and decided to join Davis and Kristy down at the Poetry Slam at Floyd's. The end of the night saw Shayne, Brook, Shayne's cousin, an assortment of other poets whose name I can't recall, and myself getting drunk in the parking lot for several hours. Shayne pulled out his balls again. It was HILARIOUS (seriously it was).

Thursday saw me learning how to use Ableton Live under the tutelage of the esteemed Mr. Cam Cumming, moping around my house for awhile, and then rocking on down to Hush with Kate (<3!) to catch Keoni and see some old friends. All in all, a worthwhile night.

Friday saw me daytripping around town with a group of people I shall not name for confidentialities sake. And we were most certainly NOT high on psychedelics. Ahem. A In my book, Friday marked the first day of spring, as it was warm enough outside to wear only one sweater, the sun was shining, and it was all in all a prime day for spontaneous wackiness. We hiked around all over town, told fatal puns, threw around the frisbee, checked out rich people neighborhoods, and got in touch with nature. It was the first time I've felt the oppressive weight of winter ease off of me. I'm ready to fuckin' GO OFF. RAARGH. It's also the first time in months that I've had fun time adventures through Beacon Hill, and I highly anticipate many more to follow. In fact, one happened the very next day! I will tell you about it shortly! The end of the night found me working at the Sunset room (big shocker there) for DJ Dust and Natron's monthly progressive house/trance night, Lucid. It was a slow night, as the last few Lucids have been, which is downright criminal, because they've all been fantastic nights of music, and I'd personally like to see them continue so that I might have somewhere to play in the near future (the music I play out is considered progressive psytrance, in case anyone was wondering). On the upside, I had the entire dance floor to myself. It is a fun and exhausting exercise to try and occupy the entirety of the dance space. Lots of sweeping movements and large steps. Try it some time!

Saturday saw me attending the first official Returning Saturn (the DJ collective I'm a part of ) crew meeting, which was held at Mr. Immink's house. I'd been looking forward to this all week, because it was an opportunity to hang out with a bunch of friends that I currently hold in the highest regard, all of whom are just as passionate about electronic music as I am, and plan out awesomeness for the next several months. Oh, and get crazy drunk and eat pizza. Later in the evening, we packed up Chris' DJ equipment and went to a bitter single's party, which Returning Saturn provided the musical entertainment for. I unfortunately had commitments at Sunset again (argh) and had to leave around 2, which also meant that I never got a chance to DJ. But by the time I left, I managed to get in a couple quality make-outs with some very attractive ladies (I don't mean to brag, but jesus, I haven't gotten any play in like 3 goddamn months, let me take my moments where I can), and the guys had managed to get a bunch of non-rave going people rocking out to psytrance. I was so proud *sniff*. As much as I was choked about leaving such a great party, Sunset was also going off that night. A packed house, quality tunes, and more cherished friends. And a long fucking night. Not only did I work from 3 am til 6 am, I had to stick around after the party ended and facilitate an after-after hours private birthday party that ran from 6am 'til noon. Some of these people just will not go down, I tell ya. By the time that ended, I was already in the advanced stages of sleep deprivation, and I had a Sunset crew meeting to attend later in the day anyways, so I just decided to stay up for the rest of the day and wander around downtown. I ended up meeting with Jessie, Abby, and Kevin in Beacon Hill and climbing trees and generally being pretty weird and silent because I was sleep deprived and completely socially drained from the previous 3 days. So I went home, caught an hour of sleep, went to the crew meeting, hung out with some friends afterwards, and finally crashed around midnight.

Which brings us to today. I'm gonna straight up admit that I had no idea how I was going to make rent this month. I completely failed on all levels to do any job hunting this month, and going into the weekend, I had one dollar to my name. So I was pleasantly suprised when I woke up to find my remaining tax forms from Camosun that I needed to file my tax return. With great haste, I made my way down to H&R block and had them cut me a cheque. And man, what a cheque. Whereas I thought I was going to get maybe 500-600 back, it ended up being around 1150 after they deducted a (small) fee. Between that and the 100 bucks I made at Sunset over the weekend, I'm out of the red for the time being. And feeling pretty darn good. I spent the majority of the day putting together my first promo mix, which I'm going to call (and I can' tell you how proud I am of this name):

"Progressive Psy Goes Boink".

That is awesome, go on, say it. I'm hoping to post it up here and on Facebook within the next week, and maybe make some CD copies (with artwork!) as well.
With my financial worries temporarily dealt with, I'm also free to go over to Vancouver this weekend and attend Justin's birthday. See ya soon buddy!

And thus ends the recap portion of this post.

ANDREW'S PERSONAL SHIT CORNER:

At the Sunset crew meeting that was held a few weeks ago, Jay introduced us all to a friend of his that does career and goal planning, and had her run us through some goal-setting strategies. A lot of it was pretty jargon-y and kinda made me roll my eyes (I don't like being sold common sense), but I decided to take it seriously anyways, because goddam do I need some goals. So, without further adieu, here is the list I came up with for the year:

Health:

1. Make my back not hurt
2. Get my teeth fixed
3. Exercise regularly ( i had this worded in a much more specific fashion, but you get the gist)

Personal:

1. Make a demo so that I may get booked at the Entheos festival
2. Get over my relationship fears
3. Draw and finish a picture at least once a week
4. Write something at least once a month/actually maintain my blog regularly
5. Get into Shambhala without paying
6. Figure what I'd like to go back to school for - Perhaps even go back to school!
7. Pay off half my student loan
8. Throw an event at Sunset

Professional:

1. Obtain a job that is unobtrusive to my personal interests and does not make me effin' miserable (I'd specifically name a place I'd like to work....but I haven't figured that out yet.)
2. Establish some kind of independent income/side business, or work towards having the schools needed to maintain one

The trick to the exercise was to make goals that were measurable and attainable in a timely manner. So some of those are probably a bit too vaguely worded. But I think I got the point across to, uh, myself, so there. Encourage me to achieve, or something.

As I touched on earlier, I'm starting to feel the shitty, oppressive weight of winter lift from my shoulders. Part of the reason that I opted not to find work for the last four months (the other being that I'm a lazy asshole) is because I need a helluva lot of personal time and space during the winter, because I traditionally become very, very depressed around this time of year, for no reason in particular (well, no personal reason anyways, the winter pretty much just sucks and nobody can deny it)and I require a lot of personal time and space to myself. This winter in particular was a very powerful exercise in coming to understand who I am as a person, and realizing aspects of my personality that I had been repressing for years because I was afraid of being judged and also coming to terms with some of my nastier side.
I also spent a lot of time being very quite and sullen around most everyone I know, to varying degrees, and I thank everyone for their patience with that. I've barely had the energy to get out of bed most mornings, let alone interact with human beings, be they close friends or not. So if I've seemed unfriendly, it's because I went through about a billion little personal crisis'/revelations between August and now, and I've been dedicating what little energy I have to trying to process them. And yeah, I've been depressed. So there. I'm hoping that within the next two months, I'll have fully opened up communication with everyone again (well, as fully as I'm ever able to communicate, anyways).

This is going to be a good year. And it's going to be an epic summer. I can feels it!

To close, I would like to show you a draft of the logo that Justin has been designing for ol' DJ Dodd. I was going to wait until it was completely finished, but I'm so happy with how it's turning out, and so appreciative of the time he's put into it, that I gotta show ya:

Oh hey

You'd think after nearly a month of nothing I might have something to talk about. But no!

I read poetry without a shirt on at Tongues of Fire last Thursday, as a tribute to Shayne. I apologize if you were in the first three rows, as you were likely blinded by my magnificent ivory skin. It was kinda nerve wracking, as I've never read there before, and I have a bit of a thing about exposing myself to people. But, as my good friend Aaron told me, anxiety is the exact same thing as excitement. It just depends on how you direct it. It was a good piece of advice. I THOUGHT I'D SHARE IT. Afterwards, Jay graciously gave us the keys to the sunset room and let us have a little private party for Shayne, that was ever so lightly attended. Davis and Kristy even came. As we remarked to each other, it really was like feeling embarrassed about your parents showing up to the school dance. I got to DJ for a couple people at the end of the night, and that was a fun AND educational.

Friday night saw me back at the Sunset, workin' a little concesh' for Heartbeats 3, a progressive house/trance night headlined by none other than my favorite DJ at the moment, Mr. Josh Eades. I stuck around after my shift was done and partied it up with my favorite group of people, and had a grand old time. . Come Saturday, I was absolutely bagged, and I went and hung out with Jessie and Lexi in the sweetest goddam living room fort ever. It had it's own little fireplace and everything. I'd post an accompanying picture, but it would fuck up the layout. So fuck you.

Jasmine and I interviewed for the same job last week, without realizing we'd both applied. It was one of those intense hour long interviews where two people ask you the shittiest questions, and it was for a telemarketing position with an HR placement firm. As much as I needed it... Well, I'm kinda relieved she got it instead of me. It sounded like my own personal hell.

Lunar eclipse tomorrow! THAT'S PRETTY SWEET. I hope I remember to look up.

I still can't decide how in-depth and personal I want to get with this thing. I feel like I'd just be foisting my problems on people. And I'd rather do that in person. THOUGHTS?

NEW FEATURE: Some albums I like right now:

Ott - Skylon - chilled out electronic psy-dub much in the same vein as his previous album. Which means it is fantastic.

Atmosphere - Lucy Ford - Really fantastic hip hop that got me listening to hip hop again. Well that and...

Buck 65 - Situation - The newest album from my favourite music guy, is a nice happy balance between his old, weird lo-fi stuff and his newer Johnny Cash inspired stuff.

Koxbox - U-turn - Bangin' fucking psytrance.

peace

I did a thing.

I've been receiving an overwhelmingly positive response to my set last night, so I must have done something right. Despite how nervous I was, I had a seriously good time and I'm so thankful to everyone who came out and showed me love, and to everyone who helped make that happen, including Shayne, Brook, and Jason. I can't wait to see the 20 billion pictures that were taken while I was playing. Can't wait to do it again.

I guess now that the gig is out of the way, I have nothing to do but try and get myself out of the gutter. I have another meeting with my job councilor on Tuesday, where I am supposed to bring a list of 10 places that I want to target for some aggressive job hunting tactics, and also talk to 5 people I know about possible contacts in fields that I'm interested in. So far, I have done neither... any ideas, anyone?

I have been invited to go to the pool by Colin, Jessie, and Ruby tonight, and so I shall be doing that. Over and out.

The poorness in which I maintain this blog is a metaphor for how I maintain my life.

I'm pretty sick right now. Headache, hella sniffles, aches, pains, my arm fell off, my throat is sore, my foot's asleep, it's terrible. So I've been lying on my couch for the last two days playing Resident Evil 4, with a brief excursion across the street to visit Justin and play a board game. We played Al Hombre, a game where you are Sultans trying to build the biggest castle. I won. Fuck yeah.

This sickness does not bode well for me, as I really, really, REALLY need to get a job this week, and also get in a lot of rehearsal for the show next weekend. These are the times where you kinda realize that you MIGHT have fucked up a little by not working for the last four months. I'm not saying that I did fuck up. But I MIGHT have.

The Davis and Andrew Movie Experience (Note: not the actual name) is a go, tentatively we are aiming to have the first one on Feb 13th. We're gonna show some movies. Maybe along some kind of Valentine's day theme. Yeah.

OTHER THINGS I'VE DONE IN THE PAST FEW DAYS:
-Tongues of Fire (It was fun.)
-Lucid Nights at the Sunset Room (It was alright.)
-Hung out with other people (My feelings vary from person to person.)

....!!!