Title track off of Tenacious D’s new album:
http://www.sonymusic.com/clips/selection/fu/700746/700746_01_02_full_100.asx
Footage from a giant squid documentary which hasn’t aired in Canada that I know of (this relates to the live architeuthis that was photographed a couple years ago):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGLUT62mHz4
I have a few mp3s that I think everyone should hear. Do you want to hear them? If so, email me from an email account that can receive 2-3 meg files.
Five days without a post, how shameful.
The last few days have been pretty full. I got an acting agent. I played that dice game as seen in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 a couple times with Sam & Stephane and some others at the Drexoll German Board Game Night. Also played that railroad game and some bean planting game which was pretty decent. The next morning I was right back in the store, for Warhammer with Michael at a VGG Game Day. Here’s the character I played:
Then I went to another comic jam at the Jolly Alderman and disseminated buttons to Robin, Rebecca, Brian, Ed, and another guy who is an animator whose name I forget, but he was pretty excited about Stewie’s Powerpuft Girl, which is a cross between the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and the Powerpuff Girls. Then I went to Mike & Sam’s birthday party and saw some delightfully hideous stuffed creatures, and Mike and I talked about a delightfully macabre candy which would be a chocolate “belly” and a gummy fetus inside it. It comes with a coat hanger spoon. Sorry I should have given a warning before I threw that out, eh? Then I played Call of Cthulhu with Caleb and the gang, and then went to a Vancouver Gaming Guild meeting where we talked about V-Con and Weathertop. There will be no Con Fu and no H.P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Party in 2007, thereby making Weathertop bigger by default (one would imagine). Yesterday I spent most of the day working on my Thickets homework, and I biked downtown. Today I’m off to Chilliwack for practice. Looks like we’ll have a show in Vancouver on Oct 21 – so mark it on your calendar! At the Backstage Lounge with A Canadian Werewolf In….
Still having difficulty getting quorum for a Musicology Slackademics class. I guess everyone already knows how to read music?
Most importantly, I discovered that Space is playing The Hilarious House of Frightenstein! Finally something to watch on TV again! Turner Classic Movies doesn’t count as TV because there’s no commercials.
My new e-friend Joyce asked me to pick a favourite song from the 70’s through to the 00’s. I upped the stakes by going back to the 30’s, and I thought I’d share with you:
30’s When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano – The Ink Spots
40’s At An Arabian House Party – Raymond Scott
50’s Day-O – Harry Belafonte (I couldn’t think of anything else)
60’s Let’s say….Across the Universe by The Beatles (special mentions: King Kong vs Godzilla main title a capella by Akira Ifukube OR anything from the Spider-Man cartoons composed by Ray Ellis.)
70’s Mahna Mahna by the Muppets? Hmmm.. or Truth Hits Everybody or Message In A Bottle by The Police. There’s so many good ones on Regatta de Blanc. Or how about Looking for Today by Black Sabbath?
80’s Not counting any Monty Python songs…Rags & Bones by NoMeansNo. Or Overkill by Men At Work.
90’s SO HARD to choose. 100 Years (Of Tears in the Wind) by Masters of Reality; End Titles from Miller’s Crossing (Carter Burwell); What Deaner Was Talkin’ About OR Buckingham Green by Ween; Isobel by Bjork; There are like five 10/10 songs on OK Computer; most of the songs off Queens of the Stone Age debut album.
00’s – I’ll keep it to one. I’m gonna say Rock Your Socks Off by Tenacious D.
or Hustle Rose by Metric.
OH CRAP. Subject to change – ask me again in 2010.
And now, a drawing of Bill Murray
Favourites? I’m only using 4 designs. Other ideas welcome.
…..ps – clearly, these are roughs.
Look, I’m a fan of independent business. I really am. I set foot in a WalMart if I’ve been feeling overly sanguine and need a reality check. So I am willing to pay that extra $5 so you can put your vegan pot brownies in your holier-than-thou hipster hole. But if you’re not going to have the common clemency to stock Tenacious D, then we are done. I’d love to stay and chat, but I hear my mommy calling, and by mommy I mean amazon.ca.
Just tossing around ideas. All plans are carved into chocolate in the hot sun.
What if The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets put out two albums in the year 2007? One circa January and the second one in August with a big CD release concert at the Penny Arcade Expo (what I call the P.A.E.). Polling various nerd experts gets a figure of about 20,000 attendees to the last one, with the next one to double. If even one percent of that number purchases some variety of Thickets merch, we could do well. We just need some kind of trustworthy, hardworking rep down there to prep everything for our arrival. That gives us almost a year to get our byakhee in a row with regards to merchandise.
One of the albums would be The Shadow Out of Tim storyline. The second would be just a collection of songs, with a DVD retrospective of the band (the one Ive been planning for years and which almost happened this past winter). Dont know what order theyd be released. Each album would have at least 9 songs on it.
Heres a question for you if we were to include a remix (aka do-over) of one of our older songs, which one should it be? It wouldnt just be a re-recording, wed want to alter the song, do it in a different style, or otherwise make it unique. It shouldnt be one of our most popular, polished ones, because a song like The Math Song or Burrow Your Way To My Heart doesnt need fixing.
Weve got an Eastern sounding song coming down the wire and I had an interesting thought. A la Dies ist Unverschamtheit, what if we did a song in ancient Egyptian, or Coptic, possibly about Nyarlathotep or Irem, City of Pillars. Ive composed an email to Stuart Tyson Smith, noted Egyptologist from University of California who was a language coach for the Stargate and Mummy films. Forgot to send it last night in all the gaming excitement but Im hopeful. Turning now to The Shadow Out of Tim, I had an interesting idea for a song this afternoon. As mentioned in a previous blog entry our marine biologist protagonist retraces the voyage he has made while his mind was possessed by a Yithian, taking his boat, the R.V. Steadfast, far out to sea in the Indian Ocean. I think it would be fun to have a song that just illustrates all the terrible way his various crew members meet their respective demises one fateful night. Kind of like a Gashlycrumb Tinies set on a boat.
Oh and weve got a show at The Vault in Chilliwack on the 30th, and Im working on a Halloween one here in Vancouver (any suggestions?).
Take note, Warren Banks, we had a wee band meeting yesterday and heres whats up.
If Merricks up to it, we may book a sequence of 1-3 shows end of September or October to finance rental of practice space. We may try to record bed tracks (at the very least) for 6-8 songs in, say, November. Likely candidates include Sleestak & Yeti, A Marine Biologist, Kill the Chupacabra Tonight, Downtown, Hall of Doors, and Shhh .
All plans subject to change without prior notice.
I briefly went through with the kids the narrative for the Shadow Out of Tim theme that I want to have for some of the songs on the album. (as follows)
Prologue: A Marine Biologist introducing Dr. T.S. Peaslie, a marine biologist who studies architeuthis dux, the giant squid.
Chapter One: The Shadow Out of Tim our good doctor lapses into a second, alien personality, and goes on a mysterious 3 month expedition on his research vessel.
Chapter Two: Back to the his regular self some time later, Dr P tries to piece together clues of what happened, and reconcile with friends and family. Song to be determined.
Chapter Three: The terrible dreams of being trapped in a Yithian body in the primordial jungles of Australia, interrogated by other Yithians using weird musical instruments, begin to haunt the doctor. Song to be determined, possibly Bed of Flame (to be renamed) or Eaten Alive (to be renamed).
Chapter Four: Return to Te Taniwha. Dr P retraces the marine journey he took while his body was possessed by the Yithian, and learns that some things man was not meant to know.
Epilogue: Downtown in the Mesozoic age, angiosperm plants evolved along with bees, aphids and grasshoppers. Oviraptors were plentiful. Ammonites and belemnites became extinct. Oh, and dinosaurs too. There was no cross-promotional marketing, focus groups, spam, or commercials of any kind. The Yithians projected their minds off planet.
Standalone songs: Kill the Chupacabra Tonight, Sleestak & Yeti, Shhh (almost definitely), Hall of Doors/Ode to Nyarlathotep
Okay, who thinks that “Superchthonic” should be the name of the next Thickets album? Because I do. It works on so many levels. Supersonic. Sonic=sound. Chthonic = the underworld.
ps it’s pronounced ‘SOO pur THAW nik’
The 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, despite it’s flaws in writing and animation, had fantastic music. Much (if not all) of this, I’ve come to learn, was composed by a jazz musician by the name of Ray Ellis. While trying to track down actual mp3s of the original tunes, I discovered a band called Volume which has released a CD called The Amazing Spider-Band. There are 9 tracks on the album and the song tidbits that I’ve heard seem reasonably faithful to the originals, so I thought I’d support them and buy a CD. However, the album was out of stock on cdbaby.com and so I emailed the band through their website. Here’s the email I got back:
As you know we are unfortunately out of stock at the moment. We are actually in the process of producing a full length album with Ray Ellis producing. We plan on recording in Capitol studios in LA and using the best Jazz session guys in LA. The album probably will not be out until Oct….hopefully you can wait that long…..please spread the word and thank you for your interest!
Chris
So for heaven’s sake, here I am spreading the word and by gawd I am looking forward to the result of this collaboration! I only hope it contains dozens of the songs, and every single tune from the series is a real gem. Years ago, my pal Stephane made a CD for me out of the songs he recorded from video and they get constant rotation in my iTunes. And confidentially, there’s more than one of those tracks that “inspired” Thickets tunes (i.e. blatant ripoffs. See “Yog-Sothoth“).
Well I’m pleased as punch that the owner of the Rio, my new fave theater, would post a comment on my blog. I went to see Superman again last Wednesday with Stewie and I realized I forgot to mention one other advantage of the Rio – it’s got a balcony! As Mukesh points out, Lady in the Water starts on the 21st. I’m game.
In other news, The Thickets had a great writing session tonight and we’ve nigh locked down two previous roughs* and we’ve got a couple new concepts on the table**. So we’ve basically got (in no particular order):
Warren’s Song (Eaten Alive)
The Makening
Sleestak and Yeti (Arise)
Operation: Get the Hell Outta Here
Shhhh…
*Downtown (now with chorus)
Kill the Chupacabra Tonight
They Come in Threes
*The Shadow Out of Tim
You Know You’re A Monster When (Automatic)
Bed of Flame (Son of Kablam)
**Merrick’s Song
**Our Part of the Bargain
That’s totally an album’s worth of songs! But I want a get a couple more in there yet, like Hall of Doors and Made In Leng.
You must be logged in to post a comment.