Music Technology

Today was a fun day to be at McGill. I participated in an experiment over at music tech. As a byproduct of that, I got to have my hearing tested!

My hearing is great! Which is amazing considering the concerts I ve been to and the drummers I ve played with. I have above average hearing range and sensitivity, which was surprising because I m not usually the first to complain about loud noises. The test itself was fun and I got 20$ for my trouble!

McGill is growing on me but I'll never become a McGill snob. Or a montreal snob for that matter.

Sometimes they come back...

An interesting thing happened a few days ago. Something that uncovered a forgotten collection of treasured experiences. A long story I know... I said short entries but I lied.

When I was young, I didn't collect comics. People around me collected comics and quickly forgot about them. Sometimes I'd inherit a forgotten collection from some friend of the family. (That's how I got my nearly complete Conan series). Most of my stuff came from my brother who was interested in drawing before he got into hip hop culture.

Sometimes when I was on a long road trip my dad would let me pick out a few, not realizing that gas stations didn't usually stock first issues of anything. I would find myself peeking into a tiny sliver of an artists vision, reading it over 20 times in a vain attempt to understand the characters and plots. For those of you who have never read a comic. Imagine having only episode 25 of Six Feet Under to keep you busy for a 15 hour car ride.

Looking back, it's funny how I adapted to my strange 1 shot collection. I learned to fill in the back story of the characters, letting my imagination run wild and justify all their actions. I'd then project a future scenario and figure out how the story would end. This turned into a habit that I still carry with me.

Somehow The Maxx #8 made its way into the Britton household in the mid 90s. I must have read that 25 page comic 100 times. Nothing made any sense, it was well written, clever and amazingly well illustrated. At that point in my life, the fact that Maxx was big, yellow, purple was was good enough for me.
A few days ago The Maxx entered my life again, this time as a complete series. I had wondered about this guy for 14 years and now was my chance to see what he was about. As I started reading I realized why I had so much trouble with this one when I was a kid. The surreal and complex narrative was far deeper than my little kid brain could have imagined. Serial rapists, social workers, mental patients, vagrants and drop outs... I had no idea the story would be this gritty. The best part was seeing where my projected back stories differed from the real deal.

Don't let the yellow claws and blood smears fool you. The Maxx is one hell of an interesting examination of the human condition. Very little violence, mostly surreal and introspective. Maxx is one of the most tragic and bizarre heroes I've ever encountered. It joins the list of comics I actually like. (Far shorter than most people would expect)

Maus
Hellboy
The Maxx

Maxx was animated at some point. They dropped out the really messed up stuff and cut a lot of corners with the story. The animation is fun to watch.
...

But it's not as good as interesting.

Do Youtube?

TenTooMany is on youtube!

Big thanks to Joel for putting together the crazy TenTooMany DVD. When I heard about this project I had no idea what to expect. I think it looks great!

Joel's TTM DVD clip

This clip is a little slice of the big DVD that has our entire CD releae. What a nice thing to do! Princess toadstool looks pretty funny with that crazy umbrella and hooker makup. I can see why Nick had a crush on her all those years ago. Look at those sweet pool balls stuck to her ears and those sexy gloves/shoes!

The media scares me!

As America gets excited about Britney Spears and her new haircut, the Bush administration's 2008 budget is revealed to little fanfare. Perhaps people deserve to get their tax dollars wasted. Not that I want to get branded as some sort of leftist alarmist but... It seems to me that this budget is all about tax breaks for big corporations and cuts to social programs. *nice* I wonder if people weren't addicted to celebrity bull shit, would they care more about where their money is going? Is Canada any different?

Shwartz

This was the best sandwich i've EVER had and it was only 4,50$

Montreal is supposed to be famous for smoked meat. I tried some a month after I got here and it was gross. As it turns out, you can't just go anywhere for smoked meat, only certain places have the genuine article. It is the same with bagels and bread. If you are in Montreal, you have to check out Shwartz Deli, you'll be glad you did. The people there are very nice and the prices are amazing.

Têtes à claques!

Têtes à claques is a crazy series of internet shorts. Mostly they involve strange dolls with ugly faces in awkward situations. Could there be anything more enjoyable than that? Quebec is a strange place... That being said, I'm starting to understand and enjoy Quebec humor a bit more thanks to this site! My profound apologies for people who can't speak French... Your best bet is to check out the Willie waller 2006 clip. The rest of you, enjoy this insanity!

Full site:

http://www.tetesaclaques.tv/

My Favorite:
http://www.tetesaclaques.tv/video.php?vid=15

and the most famous one for english speakers, Willie Waller 2006:
http://www.tetesaclaques.tv/video.php?vid=30

Têtes à claques translates to something like... "An ugly face you want to slap"

3B Concert Evolution 5x8

Things went very well. Thanks to all who came. I am very impressed with the level of commitment McGill gives to composition students.

Tristan Murail, Hellboy and others

First of all: http://www.ingernet.de/rs/_grau_robertseidel.mov

Now that that is out of the way, I've got a busy week ahead of me. I've got a premiere on Thursday. I hope I remember to take a picture. Also, there is some sort of external review of the composition program at McGill. I'll get to meet Tristan Murail, one of the most famous composers living today! Apparently as part of some sort of external review, he wants to hear what I think about McGill's composition program (along with the other comp grad students).

Rajat and I saw Hellboy Sword of Storms the other day. It was fun, but it wasn't as good as the comics. I think it was made for TV so they had to scale some of the weird stuff back. HB looks cool as a cartoon but they took away all the gritty dark stuff that his character relies on. Instead it was very bright and Hollywood. Hellboy never really works as a normal hero, that's why I like him. Strange to see the writers try and make him seem like something he isn't.

The villains in the cartoon were much weaker than they could have been. Instead of the tragic, twisted and desperate villains from the comics, we got shallow cannon fodder. The majority of the monsters in this one were drawn from Japanese mythology. Fun to see Hollywood versions of some very old demons.

Also, part of what makes the HB comic cool, is the fact that the characters don't look like models. The woman are very normal looking and middle aged. Somehow in the cartoon they all turned 15 and, lost weight and got a bunch of eye makeup.

Montreal Smoked Beef

Rajat was in the city this weekend. I got to explore the city as part of my role as tour guide. Here is a list of some of the trouble we got into.

1. Laval and the Space Science Museum.
2. Chinatown and The Jade Garden Buffet
3. The Montrel Planatarium
4. Climbing Mt Royal.
5. Tour of McGill and the New Music Building.
6. Akavan
7. Montreal Smoked Meat
8. Chateau Super Sex
9. The Village and Priappe.
10. Rue St Cathrines
11. New Hellboy Movie

TTM Postlude

This has been a difficult week for many reasons. Most interestingly, ghosts of TenTooMany have been haunting me. I got our CDs to the Planet smashers, people keep asking about my band. We were offered a show this summer. Also, I was going through some old pictures.

And... I made an emo realization through a dream.

There are so many TenTooMany songs that you will never get to hear. (Other than the few that didn't make it onto the CDs) Most people don't know this... but I wrote a lot of songs that never really made it to the band for whatever reason. Chord progressions, lyrics, song ideas that I put away, waiting for another time. Sometimes I can hear them. I'll play a few notes on the piano, and imagine how the band will treat the track. It's a fun way to remember.

***

In my dream I was walking in CJS. I walked into the gym. The lights were off and things were decorated in a shitty high school kind of way. There was a stage in the corner, all of TTM's equipment was set up like it was on sun fest back in the day.

I sat down at the piano and started to play one of the tracks that never made it. Suddenly I was playing bass with the band, a track we've never done before. Everyone else knew it some how. It was super loud and tight. The audience was crammed in the CJS gym, except things were blurring together from all our old shows and venues. The band was the same, but things were blurring and shifting all around us. West End, Pyramid, CJS, Big Breakfast, Flat Bed Truck etc.. For some reason I was scared this was going to be my last time playing with TTM, so I enjoyed it as much as I could. When the track was done everything was back to the normal gym, leaving me standing there, alone. Except this time, the gear wasn't there, and the gym was normal. No tin foil stars...

***

Quite the memory to have I suppose. To bad about all those songs that would never be.

In other news, I had to abandon boot camp and narrowly avoided the shame hat. Luckly I was so sick I got off on a technicality. Kevin had it right when he said "Wow Eliot, you don't get sick often, but when you do... You do it like a man". So here I am... after having gone though a cold/flu things have moved into a sinus infection. I hope this is the last thing in this delightful parade of mucus, viral infection and bacteria.