We played a show last week for these amazing kids at St. Andrew’s school in Delaware. The students were so awesome – by the end of the show, most of the audience was on stage with us. Clapping, dancing, singing. It was a freakin party.
This confirms my recent longing to play for younger audiences. 21+ shows tend to be more jaded and low-energy. St. Andrew’s, you guys are rad! We’ll come back soon.
Anyone got more show pictures?
Come see me and the band at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City on Tueday night.
Be there at 7:00 pm to see us play!
Keyboard still broken. I’m into this song lately. It has a lot of minor chords and it’s weird. I’m loving weird lately.
This seemingly innocent song has some randomly psycho little features. I wish I could say I meant to write them. It has a couple key changes, plus melodies that are called back in the different keys, so the same melody is heard in a different context. The verses are cyclical – they have no clear beginning and end (I just chose arbitrary places to start and stop). There are deceptive chords that should be minor, but are weirdly major. This is called back in the verse repetition thing at the end. Also the time signatures are all over the place on this one – nothing really odd, like 5/4 or something, just weirdly chopped measures and odd numbers of chords in a progression, etc.
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Hey, we got some incredible last-minute entries to the low-budget video contest! I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be Judge Wes.
Here’s a round-up of all the videos: first, we have an embarrassing (for me) soufflé of ancient footage of my rat-tail adorned head and fat women dancing from NickSax12. This video is amazing. 10/10
Second, we have a hilarious and mysterious Big Girl video from donmarquez101. Awesome acting and enigmatic interpretation. Rad. 10/10:
And here’s the Sugar entry that I never posted, made by none other than my own mother. It’s amazing beyond words. I’m struggling to describe it, really. 10/10
And last but not least, here’s the 10/10 Vegas romp from BeauregardB that was posted a couple weeks ago:
The court will resume when Judge Wesley has made his final verdict.
By the way, keep making these. The deadline is over, but I’ll still send you something cool or write you a song or somethin’.
And ps, if I haven’t written or called you back lately, I’M SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry for the overload on guitar songs. My keyboard broke in the epic Stand Break Show Disaster 2010. Today I’m trying to fix it, also going to the zoo to draw animals for album artwork.
I wrote this song in about five minutes.
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I ran into Jolie’s Tarmac video this weekend. I think it’s darn rad.
Tarmac
this is no fun – this is music from a shallow man – these are movies from a shiny can – then why are my friends -sitting over on the other side – sitting over on the other side – i could barely make it through alive – but the cannery workers – are players and millionaires
buddy, you still set on taking off? yes, as a matter of fact – give me a chance, can I get my wings out on the tarmac?
industry gone – information is becoming free – no more radio or mtv – singing, why are my friends – sitting over with computer king – shake your booty, we’ve got everything – entertainment, air conditioning – but the blood on the carpet is making me manic
buddy, you still set on taking off? yes, as a matter of fact – give me a chance, can I get my wings out on the tarmac? – well buddy, what if the world is mostly full of brown-eyes? – come on and give me a chance, can i get my wings out on the tarmac?
everyone gets a chance in cybermocracy – maybe i’d like that more if people didn’t suck – turn down the voices of the singularity – and turn up the music
and i sing and i want something to break but all the pipelines are broken i – am just fine and i am fed and i’m well but i am still feeling broken, aye
Wes and I made bad raps again. Check out the video. Disclaimer: watch out for f bombs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oyr_n-uyOY&feature=player_embedded
The Deli magazine featured me on their NYC blog, right up front! Cool, man. You gotta scroll down a bit cause it’s been a couple days since they posted it.
http://nyc.thedelimagazine.com/
I’m ecstatic that they put the Cult Of Karl video up.
(First of all, don’t forget, show in NYC at Sullivan Hall at 8:30 pm TOMORRA)
I’m at Disneyland Hotel right now! I don’t have a room, but I’m on the internet in the lobby! Leaving for NY at 4 in the morn.
The title and first two sentences of this post were designed to evoke childlike excitement and happiness! Now, I hit you with really really bad news!! Ready?!! Great!!! The next Chris Merritt album isn’t going to be even close to done on May 1st! Oh boy!! We currently lack the resources to create the most amazing album ever made!!! HoorayyyY!!!
Don’t worry. We’re working on this thing, and it sounds 100 times better than any other musical album ever made by a man or woman human. I don’t want to cut any corners at all, and so we’re really not settling for less. I felt like VA Hoverers Pt. 1 and Demos Of Nod and even Pixie And The Bear were all compromised by severe budget and time constraints. I also want real distribution and marketing on this release, which could be within our grasp. I guess I could make another album full of my best-written songs, hastily and half-assedly produced, but…..I’m ready for something better. Even the two singles, Big Girl and Sugar have gained new parts, and lyrics, mixing, etc, and become more ultimate since their release. Favorite and Wire have come into their own, too, with newer versions. On top of that, there are 10 more songs that haven’t even been tracked. Over 20 in all. We love them all. Only ten will make the final cut.
I don’t have a release date. I’ll just say…..soon. As in, months away. This summer probably.
If anyone is actually saddened by this news, if anyone out there cares, I say to you, thank you for your support and love. I’ll be updating the Tuesday Tapes with new songs every week and bringing you updates as we hammer details out. We’ve managed to round up some funding, and we might even have real distribution and marketing with this thing.
If you’re still sad, here’s the worst picture of me ever taken:
Chris Merritt, Orange County, CA, 2010. Photo by Wes Nease.
UPDATE: Don’t forget to come out to the show in NYC Thursday. Sullivan Hall, show starts at 8:30 PM. Also playing: Shannon Corey and Tim Be Told.
I’ve been writing, but traveling and too busy to tape ‘em. Here’s a b-side from the Sugar single (I particularly like this song):
Falling asleep on the plane to California while istening to Richard Dawkins read his book The Ancestor’s Tale.
I was on the chapter dealing with our 195 millionth grandparent, the mudskipper. A fish that had the tenacity and sport to venture onto land, evolving into an air-breathing walker.
Dawkins says,
“I like the idea that we are descended from some creature which, even if it was different from a modern mudskipper in many other respects, was as adventurous and enterprising as a little dog: the nearest thing, perhaps, to a dog that the Devonian had to offer? A girlfriend of mine from long ago explained why she loved dogs: ‘Dogs are such good sports.’ I think the first fish to venture out onto the land must have been an archetypal good sport, whom it would be a pleasure to call ancestor.”
The vast valley of time that seperates us from this common ancestor is almost impossible to really grasp. Millions of years. A hundred years, a thousand, ten, a hundred thousand, a million, hundreds of millions. But it all happened and the process was never shut down fully, and millions and millions of little creatures survived and reproduced and died, and now we sit here, the product of the best survivors, the .000001% who made it, and found mates, and made babies.
So, I was listening to Dawkins talk about these ancient creatures, more ancient than we are equipped to grasp (we never evolved the capacity to grok such huge amounts of time, and never wanted to, until recently), and I was falling asleep, in that dream-hallucinating state between wake and sleep (the same state Carl Sagan shows is responsible for most “alien abductions” and demon-haunted madness), and I truly grokked, for a second, this vast amount of time. How truly amazing it is that such a creature existed, so very long ago, and gave rise to our lives. I was there on that shore, for a couple seconds, watching this creature struggle against all odds, and I really saw him, and grokked him. He was really there. He was struggling but happy to struggle and happy to be alive. He is my relative, and I still carry much of his genetic code.
Bizarre. It’s so cool to be alive sometimes.
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