dear science....

by TVOTR happens to be the 5th record, since my love affair began with music that began over 20 years ago (with the "Good Morning Vietnam" soundtrack - all 50s and 60s gems, GN'R's "Appetite For Destruction", & Dylan's "Bringing it all Back Home") that i have listened to EVERY day since i have acquired it........ just overwhelmingly done proper, so much so that it lends itself to everyday play.

when i got KID A in Oct 2000, i listened to it for at least 3 whole months straight, almost solely. i couldnt grasp the fact that radiohead dare to fufill their obvious commitment to excellence by following up my personal favorite record of all time, OK COMPUTER with a masterpiece. O.C. meant so much to me when it came out in 97 at 19 years old. i lived and died with that record.

the 1st record i believed in as a sign post of change and forward motion was when i heard DECADE by neil young (DECADE is a 10 year retrospective tracing most of the late to early 70s Neil catalog and some 60s gems. it was a double record of my pop's and a double cd of mine. i learned every strum, chord, time signature, tuning, lyric, approach and execution to both records (4 sides). to this day, if i were to have an acoustic in my hand or on my lap, i would naturally strum out a NEIL tune as soon as one of my own. no other guitar player has such different identities on acoustic and electric guitar. neil is my hero. neil is a one and only type player. he plays a hard lined melodic lead guitar line that dresses the song to accompany "Like A Hurricane", he experimented with sound manipulation & feedback with his 1994 record, done for Kurt Cobain, SLEEPS WITH ANGELS, he recorded a concept record about the environment in 2003s GREENDALE, and he continues to be one of the few veteran artists still creating. a constant innovator and vital part of the music history in his 30+ years and regarded as the godfather of grunge, Neil Young continues to innovate and play by his own rules.

now that you read this like a baby-ass blog and not realize what i mean, over and over... here is some cocaine...

i never took a guitar lesson. my father, a graphic & cartoon artist and subsequently, the coolest dude i have ever met, was also a guitar player and when he and i re-met (broken, .....actually - yet to form - families of the early 80s - he is only 16 years my senior and he and i were estranged from 86 on) in 1992, at 14, he taught me guitar, top to bottom. he showed me some chords, he supplied some essential early knowledge (yr right hand [strumming hand] is more important than yr left [picking hand] - still the best advice ever!!!! & (odd for a 14 year old to try to comprehend) make love to and care for the guitar but don't just fukk it - ever, you can do more with a blues scale and two strings than a 56 note run.

for a bit of backdrop, i asked for a guitar at 12 years of age. i became obsessed with the music i had inside of me and i knew i would learn somehow. i received a second- hand, black Epiphone acoustic on august 22nd 1991. within a moments inspection of said guitar, i claimed, "i will never learn this thing." it had over 20 frets and 6 strings and just looked to me like a typical math project. (i hate math) i joined my 1st band in 1994,and although i brought in some musical ideas via my new learning process on guitar, my main job was to focus on singing lead in the band and freaking out. it was 1994 when i joined RISE. we were a hard alternative 90s outfit, actually kind of challenging for the time. anyway, i would strum away on the few "open chords (-not barre chords-) that i had learned by this point and continue and continue.

HOW IT FEELS TO BE SOMETHING ON by sunny day real estate happens to be one of the most important records of my life and again falls into the "listen day after day" category. i spun it for months straight, telling friends that it was a record to be listened to every day.

IN UTERO came out in september of 1993 and i could not believe the power there within did exist. nirvana found a way to get stronger and more defined.

and ultimately.....to backtrack, when i first learned how to play guitar, my favorite record and the most influential on my playing i would have to say was STICKY FINGERS by the stones. songs synch from deep grooves and free jams, more natural then sunshine, ...matter of fact, like exile, no sunshine - but a lot of shade and good darkness. the stones are the only ones who can do that, no one plays like keef.

honorable mention are fugazi's IN ON THE KILL TAKER from 1993, as well as gza'a LIQUID SWORDS, from the same year. 2 records that had exponential effect & growth potential.

i had yet to open up to hip-hop, fully, by the release of LIQUID SWORDS. let it be known that this past SEPT i attended a show of GZA performing the LIQUID SQORDS record at irving plaza in nyc and i was the 1st motherfukker agianst the stage hand-grabbing with RZA and throwing down proper. LIQUID SWORDS, is to me, as important as anything that Eric Clapton has EVER done.

hang me. i know some Clapton fans who are child molesters.

dude.... 100 watts of punk could'nt save us from the scream.

everyone who pretended to like me is gone...

it makes more sense to keep a daily record/overview of what goes on in band affairs via this thing.... with blogs so often used as these strange axes that wield power or arch dictators who profess what's cool or helpful tool's (haha..tool) to direct yr proceedings, why not use it to track movement in real time? (i always feel the need to make our "news updates" and "myspace blog" more of a straight away information based piece, so as to hip everyone of what is on the plate for the band in the near future, but i dont expound upon the way cooler bits of being in a band, like the SPINAL TAP moments, the ups and downs, gigs, noises and sounds, etc)

"the natural" and "rx" are 2 songs from our new record Exile Baby. they are 2nd and 3rd on the record. they run back to back as they are 2 movements of the same piece. initially the song was called "the natural prescription". i believe it was sometime in april, either right after our gig at matchless or right before, we had band practice and it happened to be in the bigger, less comfortable room at the studio building (electric plant) that we rehearse and subsequently, recorded EB at. we have a lock on the small room in the back upstairs, the cinema room. you see, we are 2 people so close quarters during practice adds an element of focus and intense eye contact which helps exponentially in the creative process, being that many times riffs grow to jams grow to songs within minutes when we get together each week at practice, just by communicating via "the shining"...talking with our instruments and the energy in the air and our minds/eyes. so,... at this particular practice, being in a different room (the studio room downstairs at electric plant is set up with a stage and couches and an odor of 1987 and a sweet vintage marshall head) we wound up filtering different ideas through the air before us. paul had been listening to a lot of radiohead's new record, In Rainbows, and was going through a bit of a phil selway fascination. the steady nature and murmur-type beats he often drops, one of the main keys in radiohead's functionality....ahh radiohead, the most important, the kings...... i happened to be feeling something jagged and dark midway through practice and a fragmented and sharp minor key riff sprang out of my SG. he locked on it and we started a meditation which ultimately made me feel the medicinal qualities of music at that moment. we continued to knock it out and at 1st pause, i do what often happens with new cinema songs, i named it based on its vibe with no lyrical content in mind. i do this all the time. they are children and they get the name they look and sound like when they fall from the womb. this one felt like it could cure my ill at the moment and it became "the natural prescription" right then.

we added water and it immed grew into something we loved, with an elongated intro made of atmoshpere and feedback. almost breaking itself into 2 pieces in front of us, but it wasnt until getting into the studio in june to start work on EB that we decided it should be 2 seperate tracks. you see, we have this method with the band. we let ideas grow and songs during shows explore of their own volition (feedback, noise jams, quiet lengths, strips of fabric, chord damage, etc). then after a certain period of time we will discuss the best characteristics that the songs have acquired via experimentation and try to reign in the proper parts, dress them accordingly. so after a lovely evening catching my morning jacket at radio city music hall in june and partying afterwards, of course we decide a good time to discuss the tailoring of said compostition is in the cab ride home at 4am, morning of recording session 1 for EB. it was that cab ride when we decided "the natural prescription" would become "the natural" (a stark movie score-type piece) and "rx" (the rest of the madness and a shortened, stronger title form). during that cab ride we also explored the idea of having companion pieces (shiner no1 & shiner no2) to open and close the record, like royal bookends. thick. determined................................. and yes, the race may never be won......but its all in the running.

this morning, in the dark of my gear-strewn apartment, with the Walkmen humming in the background (if you are a fan of theirs, please please please please esaelp esaelp esaelp check out a band called Jonathon Fire*Eater,...its the dudes from the walkmen with their original singer - the brilliant Stewart Lupton, -they made a full length record called Wolf Songs for Lambs in 97 on a major label and had 2 ep's previous to that - all of which are must-owns...nyc music before the scene came back)......anyway..when the computer asked me what to name this blog, after thinking.....hhmmmm???, cinemacinemablog, cinemablogcinemablog, bouncingexilebaby,.......all of which just were not correct.... the natural rx seemed to fit like a condom. its basically what music is for most of us who live and die by it. i have been down all the roads and the only place that rings of home is when a guitar is on my back and i am creating. same goes for paul and his kit. its medicine. hence, the natural rx.

wow. this is way more fun then,...... "we are in the studio. our new record is due out blah blah. we just played blah blah and we will play blah blah".

....... saturdays in october work well, ive always been a fan of them...the fall just stretches out proper in brooklyn....something about little bits of sparse foliage washing about cement that is a turn on)........ currently have the flaming lips "the soft bulletin" record blasting. it was my buddy Boney (a LIPS devout and all aorund great musical mind/DJ) who had suggested to me, at least 3 years ago, of having a blog for the band...a more personal touch. as i do often with good ideas from other people...i file them. this will give me a chance to drop some of the more interesting aspects of this whole deal over the side of the ship.

today we are having a cinema acoustic practice and band meeting here at CC HQ..........haha, i just realized i can write the most sparkiling candly flavored review of any of our gigs on this thing... as they are all magical, this i can assure you....if you like volume. anyway, fukk that....you can get a taste in person and i blow my own horn enough (you should see me in action)....i can however post all the set lists we have been doing since FEB (the coming out and re-birth of cinema from a 3 piece solid indie rock outfit to a 2 piece more experimantal freak out platform).................

last weekend we were in Cincinnati, OH for the MIDPOINT MUSIC FESTIVAL. when i feel like spreading some more of the details, i am sure i will drop an anecdote or 2 from the wild weekend it was (we love cincin and cincin loves cinemacinema)..... we decided at the hotel day of show after walking around town a bit to do a different set list than ever before (we never repeat the same set list anyway, but i think sometimes on foriegn ground a band might wanna play it safe, go with the playbook you got in yr back pocket... but we had no interest in that. it was paul's set list that we went with) it went as follows:

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-MPMF - sept27th

I Dont Wanna Be Yr Boyfriend
The Natural
Rx
Adult Themes
An Obstacle
PhoneCall
DryDive
Hope Dies Last
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murder most foul! murder indeed. we dropped our bit of Sabbath's PARANOID as the intro to HOPE (as we have done in the past, but not since june at LIT at the earliest), i intro'd PHONE with a section of KARMA POLICE (the "for a minute there, i lost myself" part) and right before ADULT i got a chance to accomplish a life long goal. you see, when i was younger, probably around 15 or 16, when i was in my 1st band, RISE, i had daydreamed about eventually being on the road and zig-zagging and criss-crossing about the country playing everywhere,... so in my deep manicured well-thought out mind set re: touring, for some odd reason i always thought, "when i wind up in cincinnati for a gig i MUST sing the WKRP in CIncy theme somg at one point in the set. this stuck with me over the years and when the invitation was granted us to come and rokk the MPMF there, the once long off idea came rushing back with the smell of opportunity. i turned that into one of my favorite moments on stage last weekend as i sang the theme song and by the end of the first sentence of said tune, the whole venue was singing it along with me. those moments are the reason why you keep yr head up and keep doing this. speak soon, ev.