i thought i would mention on here that my band put up a free download in honor of CMJ last week. it’s a track called EMERGENCY, one of our newer demos, produced and recorded entirely by us. it should still be up if you go to tdojb.com, and it’s definitely at tdojb.com/cmj. you should go and download it if you like, and if you dig it you should let others know and spread it around. we’d like that.

our CMJ show at trash bar in brooklyn was quite fun, by the way, more so than i’d expected it to be. we met a lot of lovely people that night, and it seemed that we won over a room that was mostly full of folks we didn’t really know. it took what felt like an hour for us to go on once we were set up onstage due to some gear malfunctions at the club (ungrounded mics, cabinets not working, etc.), but once we started playing it was a blast, and the stage sound was surprisingly good. this was our last show for a good while, i think, so i’m glad it was a high note. we need to step back from playing live and promoting shows for a spell to focus on planning for a new release, getting some remaining demos done, etc. it’s time for me to focus on a new batch of songs, too. will share them as they get fleshed out, maybe even post them on here in their raw stages. that’s what the bloggers do, yeah?

over and out.

10/25/07
I know, I haven’t really kept up with the blogging as promised, but I am working on it. Believe it or not, there are half entries that just haven’t been finished that I have been meaning to post. It’s been such a hectic time lately and I’ve just been feeling pulled in a million directions. So right now I am catching up.

Today is a weird day. My grandpa died one year ago. I miss him a lot. I found a ton of photos cleaning out my grandparents’ place in NJ, but this is one of my favorites. It is from 1944, taken in Rouen during WWII. My apologies for the shitty scan, I have one of those Epson all-in-one thingies.

I wish that I had known him as he was in his youth, what he was like then. I only knew him as one of the people who raised me, and while that was all-encompassing for me, I know also that there was so much more to him. He was an amazing guy. I look at the little smirk on his face as he’s leaning out of this army jeep and I wonder what he was thinking. And I will never know.

His name was Sam Haberman, by the way.

Listening to Elliot Smith today, ‘cause it’s that sort of a day. I don’t know what it was, maybe too much new music at the time, but I never gave From a Basement on the Hill that much attention, but I am now. I saw him perform right before he died, solo, at the Knitting Factory, some sort of secret show deal, with my friend David. He seemed so fragile, some of it was hard to watch. He played some of the Basement songs, which were more brutally poignant, even before his death, all stripped down. “A Fond Farewell” is a favorite of mine, and I always think that here’s Mr. Smith forecasting his own demise each time I listen to it. I am ashamed to say that I still don’t have New Moon. It’s high time I got it.

Anyway. There’s a blog posting for ya.