I'm Kevin and this is my life. I'm 22 years old, I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life while working a dead end job, and I'm gay.
Email is in my profile for MSN or whatever.
Uhh, hi. Remember me? I'm Kevin. I used to blog here. I don't know why I'm
making this post. Feeling nostalgic I guess?
I think back to those times every so often. Lots of good times, a handful of
bad. People came, people left. I think about them randomly. Wonder how they're
doing, what their lives are like. How many have left us since? I tried a couple
of old email addresses I had for some people, never got a response. I don't know
if people have moved on, or are gone.
There's one I think about a lot. I
doubt he'll ever see this. I doubt anyone will ever see this. So many things I'd
want to say, most I wouldn't know how. If by chance you ever do see this, drop
me a line at least letting me know you're still alive.
I almost wasn't
alive this year. This past year has been the hardest of my existance. Maybe
that's why I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm still not out of the hole, but I'm
climbing instead of digging now. Hopefully the light at the top outweighs
gravity at the bottom.
"I'm going back to falling out of chairs, and
puking on lamp posts."
Remember me? Does anyone even know this page still exists? Probably not, but oh well.
So, it's been a while since I've posted....and I don't know if this is going to become a regular thing again. I never thought it'd be so much work having a blog. Maybe I'm just lazy...
Not a whole lot is new with me. Still working the same job. I keep getting more responsibilities, without quite the same amount of pay increase...but it's cool. There had been talk of making me the general manager, and the owners taking a more back seat position instead of being there day to day, but I'm not so sure if that's going to happen. Or if it's just going to take longer than I originally thought. But I'll take it as a good sign that they keep giving me more 'important' things to do.
Anyway, the main reason I'm making this post is to make good on a promise I made about a year and a half ago. Do you guys remember when I asked/begged/harassed you to vote for my friend's band so they could win $25,000? Sure you do. I can see one of the posts right down there. Well, they ended up winning, by a rather large amount, and I can't thank you guys enough for helping. Even if you only voted once(instead of the mandatory once an hour, every hour) it helped. Hell, even if you didn't vote at all, thanks for putting up with my whining.
I may have promised a rather extravagant event that you guys would get to see. Something along the lines of a Cadillac being filled with concrete....But, come on. Did you really think something like that would happen?
It did, fuckers!
They used part of the money to film three music videos, and one of those includes filling a Cadillac with concrete. So get out the popcorn and prepare to watch 3 amazing videos!
'Waiting For Me'
'Kingpin'
'Fill It Up'
Was that fucking awesome, or what?
So, yeah. Thanks again if you voted. I promise I won't subject you guys to anything like that again. Haha
I've been thinking lately, and I've decided that I'm going to stop blogging, at least for the foreseeable future. I'll still be around the blog world, and I'm going to leave this up, but I won't be posting for a while. I'd still love to email with you guys though. I just feel I've been a bad blogger for a while now, and it doesn't give me quite the thrill that it used to. This blog, and all of you, have helped me more than you will ever know. Shit, I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for the blog and you guys. So thank you. I'm going to leave you with a collection of songs that I've made. I've recorded these over a period of time, but never posted them. Some of them I didn't feel were good enough, others I just forgot about. They're of varying styles, and quality. Some of them I recorded with my full mics and everything, others were recorded with the mic on my laptop. And everywhere in between. All of them, except Anubis, are covers. Enjoy!
Don't Call Me White (NOFX)
Puerto Rico (The Big Wu)
The Outsider (A Perfect Circle)
Naked And Famous (The Presidents Of The United States Of America)
327 (Crankshaft And The Gear Grinders)
Anubis (ME!)
Diamond Eyes (Deftones)
Scream! (Misfits)
Bother (Stone Sour)
Spiders (System Of A Down)
The Fiddle And The Drum (A Perfect Circle)
Happy (Mudvayne)
Voices (Godsmack)
Attack Of The Butterflies (Graves)
Dammit, I Changed Again (The Offspring)
And because I'm such a fucking whore, I need to ask one more favor of you guys. Crankshaft (yeah, it's one of those) is in a competition to win $25000. All you have to do is go here and vote. You can vote once an hour. He's in first place, but it goes until September 8th, and he needs all the help he can get. I promise it's the last time I'll bug you guys about it.
And, come on, he can make one hell of an exit. (Watch until the end)
It's been a hell of ride, and I'm glad you guys were all there with me. I'll still be around, just don't expect a post anytime soon. I'm sure someday I'll post again. But like I said, I'd love to still email with all of you. If you don't have my address, it's in my profile. We can chat, you can drop a line, pester me with bands and contests like I've done to you. Anything. I'm a sucker for attention, so even if it's one word saying 'hi', I'd love it.
Gabe had a way with words. Something I don't usually have. He mentioned this was part of a collection of scribbles he wanted to make into the epic of the sidewalk junkie. I don't know if that ever happened, or got to see other parts. He had mentioned making it into a song, but didn't know how. I was a little surprised when I first started to get to know him, that he liked punk rock. He even said he'd like to have tattoos like Lars from Rancid once. Well, I can't write very well, I can't sing, but I can play music decently. So I took his Sidewalk scribble and turned it into this.
Here's to you Gabe. I hope this was somewhere in your vision for the song. I hope you're happy now.
What would have been the first part of an Epic Of The Sidewalk Junkie.
Hiya! Miss me? I missed you. We should get together more often.
So River's Edge happened last weekend. I won't go into huge detail, but it was the coolest thing ever! Most of the bands throughout the day we didn't care about, but it was nice to hang out with music going on in the background. A surprise was seeing Sublime (with Rome). I really like Sublime, but the videos I'd seen of the 'with Rome' (the new version of Sublime since Bradley died) weren't that good. It just wasn't the same, and I thought they shouldn't continue under the Sublime name. But seeing them live was a big surprise. They were actually pretty damn good. I had heard that the original drummer had left the band last year, but didn't know who replaced him. Then come to find out that it was non other than Josh Freese, from A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo fame, among others. He's been one of my favorite drummers for a long time, and I'd only seen him live once before. So that was a great surprise. That probably made me like Sublime better too.
Josh drumming with Nine Inch Nails
Then came Tool. It's kind of hard for me to remember everything that happened, but I know it was awesome. Seeing them outside was interesting. It was hard, since they have a lot of visuals and the sun was still up when they started, but they made it work. And they busted out some new visuals that were amazing. I tried to find good quality videos on youtube, but there really aren't any. I found one that's pretty good though.
Sunday, all I cared to see was Puscifer. They went with an airline theme (Vagina Air) and it was hilarious seeing Maynard and crew dressed as a pilot and flight crew for the whole set, even though it was 90+ degrees out. Again, I don't remember much, but I'd say it was the best time I've seen them live. I looked for videos, and they were even worse than the Tool one's, so I won't bother. I'm hoping sometime soon some good quality ones will show up, but who knows.
Also, last weekend was Minneapolis' gay pride fest. The timing sucked, because I was in St. Paul at the show, so I couldn't make it to any of the festivities. But I heard it was a great time, and I'm proud to live in such a gay friendly city. Yeah sure, we still have the fucking assholes that think it's an abomination and all that noise, but as a whole, I think we're pretty accepting. They even re-lit the new(ish) 35W bridge for the weekend.
Uhhh.....What else...Oh, I guess I can upload the other song I wrote for E.M.P. Again, it's a little different than how it was going to be with the band, but it's still fun to play. Oh, and it helps if you record with a metronome if you're not going to record drums first....
I guess that's about it for now. Working through the weekend, and a bit on the 4th. Going to see Crankshaft and The Gear Grinders on Monday with my mom, so that'll be cool. Have you guys checked them out yet? Have you gone bankrupt giving them all your money yet? Yeah? Good! (whore moment)
So yeah. That's it. I should go to bed now. It's almost 4 AM. Smoke a smoke, and we'll see what happens I guess.
Now that my band is deceased, I was disappointed that some of the songs I'd written never got recorded. I thought they were relatively good musically and lyrically, and they had a special meaning to me. But then I thought, I have the ability, and the technology (we can rebuild him) to do it myself. So last night I recorded this song. This one especially has a special meaning to me.
This one is a little different than what I'm used to, and I changed it a bit from how the band did it, but I like it. I present to you:
Well fuck, I've been a bad blogger, and emailer, lately. I could list off excuses, but would you care? Nope. So to all, I apologize. Hopefully I'll get it back together, but if I don't, please don't kill me.
Uhmm, let's see...I took my motorcycle safety class a couple weekends ago which was pretty interesting. Most of it was pretty easy, but there were a few challenges. Most of which were weather related. The first day wasn't too warm, but it was raining almost the whole time, so that made it pretty slick out. But I got to experience things like locking up the rear wheel and skidding in a controlled environment, which was nice. Then the next day it was 95 degrees out with way too much humidity, so we were all drenched in sweat. In the 5 hour class, I drank 4 liters of water, and another 2 when I got to work after, and I was still dehydrated. Took me a couple days to recover from the weekend. But at the end I took the test and passed, so I got my motorcycle license! That's one of my excuses for being a horrible blogger, I've been spending almost all of my free time riding the bike. Even getting home from work at midnight and going for a ride. It's awesome!
What's really cool, now that it's so fucking hot out, is I don't have to wear my big leather jacket anymore. Well, I guess I never HAD to wear it, but I like my skin on my body. Anyways. I found a company online that makes long sleeve shirts out of kevlar. They're really porous, so at speed it doesn't feel like I have anything on, but kevlar has a high abrasion resistance, so when I fall, I won't get smeared on the concrete. It doesn't have any padding, so I'll still probably break my arm or whatever, but my leather jacket doesn't either, so I'm basically at the same level of protection. And the company also makes kevlar liners for under your pants. They're basically long underwear made out of kevlar, for the same reason. So now when I go out in 95 degree weather, I'm not baking alive in leather! Yay!
Uh..I've got some concerts coming up that are going to be pretty sweet. June 23rd is TooL, and the 24th is Puscifer. I was amazed to learn that they were playing at the same festival. Usually Maynard (Tool, Puscifer, wine. Google it) likes to keep all of his things separate, but for some reason, he's playing with both. What's really cool, is Tool tickets are usually around $60, and Puscifer tickets are usually around $60, and the two day festival tickets were $120. But there are a whole other bunch of bands playing. Granted, most of them I don't care to see, but some will be worth checking out. I'm not a big Flaming Lips fan, but I hear they put on a great live show, so that might be cool. River's Edge
Later in the summer, I'll be going to Big Wu Family Reunion, but I'll talk more about that when it gets closer.
Most of you, if any, won't remember a band I mentioned on here a while back called the Mojo Spleens. They're a local surf punk band, self described as 'the fastest surf band around. It's kinda like Dick Dale on PCP'. Well it had been a while since I'd heard anything from them, and since I've rather dropped out of the local punk scene I was out of the loop. But I came across a new band the other day, fronted by non other than Alex Larson, guitar player for the Spleens. So I decided to check out his new project, Crankshaft. It started as a one man band, just him playing guitar, the drums with his feet, some harmonica, and singing. But now it switches between that and a whole band. Both versions are great in their own respects, offering different moods and feelings on the same songs. I bought a cd, and really liked it. Even my parents, who after hearing the Spleens were convinced they would hate it, liked it a lot. Then I went to a show of their's, and I feel in love. So now I'm kind of a Crankshaft whore, and am peddling it to anyone and everyone I know. So I'll do it to you guys too! Hey, who doesn't love down and dirty blues? So go to the website, buy some cds, give them all of your money, and check him out when he comes to your town. Alex quit his day job and is trying to make a living as a musician, so just start throwing money at him. After you listen to it, you'll want to anyways.
Well this got a bit long. Sorry about that. I'll leave you now with a Crankshaft video (or 2. Hey, I said I was a whore) and another cover that I did.
Andy, DJ, Jeff, Paul, and myself had been kicking around the idea of doing a song together for a while. I did my part waaaay back in February. And then it kind of fell apart....But now it's done! And damn, I am impressed. The last I heard it, was just my drum and bass parts. Now it's a whole song. Big shout out to Andy, DJ, Jeff, and Paul for putting in the time and getting this thing done. I'm happy.
I'll send you to Jeff's page, as he does a better job of explaining it, I think.
