Whoa!

So I realized that I haven't blogged in forever. Stupid twitter that makes me just not want to blog at great length.

Well to bring you up to date...nothing has really been going on. We had an awesome show this past weekend. We played in Dekalb at The House Cafe. It was a decent turn out and we got to play with our friends and soon to be split comrades The Nominees Are, which is always a blast. After the show, we went back to their place and hung out/played drinking games. As usual, it was a total blast due to how cool those guys are and how hilarious James is drunk.

For the most part its been head down powering through. Nothing really to excited I suppose.

I got the unfortunate news this weekend that my puppy Licorice, which many of you know, has an enormous softball sized tumor on her chest and its growing pretty rapidly. The vet told us that she didn't have to much time left, but she doesn't act like she's dying if she is. She was rolling around in the snow like her usual playful self. With the exception of being a bit drowsy more often (because of the amount of drugs we are putting into her) she is the same cheery puppy that she usually is. So with a little bit of luck she'll live longer than a couple more weeks.

Work is still work. Working on a lot of projects for the PR company that are a lot of fun.

So, I keep coming up with really ambitious life goals, but life goals that I know I'll regret if I don't accomplish. The first is running a relatively successful record label. I love music so much and I really enjoy the idea of putting out music that I love. I've learned, and continue to learn, so much about the music industry. The only problem is how big of a scary adventure it'll be due to how cut throat the music industry. Not to mention, the obvious point that the music industry is in just as much turmoil as the economy is.

This idea of this record label spawned this want for having this giant conglomerate of things that I'd like to be apart of. I want to own a venue as well and I'd have the label offices in the venue. Attached to the venue I'd like a music shop (both a record store and an instrument store). I don't think that's capitalized enough by venues. There is a huge benfit to having a music shop next door. There are needs that bands have that are on the spot: strings, drumheads, maybe a guitar, etc.

Also out of this building I'd like to run a magazine. I've loved writing for one. I love writing music. I know a lot of talented writers.

Lastly, a clothing line. I have a tremendous appreciate for designers. Mostly because I can't do it at all and think its totally cool that people come up with this stuff.

Deriving from all these things is a couple important concepts.

One is that everyone of these things lends to the other. Your market is in every one of these things. You can sell label merch at shows. You can doing merchandising for your bands through your clothing company. Well all at the same time promoting them through a magazine. People who are interested in music at shows are people that are going to buy records and stuff from a music shop. Your whole market is constantly looking at something you are providing, which in turn just constantly creates these revenue streams. Also Dave has some really rad ideas about incorporating a coffee shop esque venue like The House. Which sells coffee and beer and there is a rad stage and incorporating a logging in system to purchase and download music thats playing on the PA in the shop. I know I'm not explaining it well he could do it a lot better ask him. But you can play your labels bands in the coffee shop and sell your music there. There are just so many different avenues to get out what you are doing.

Of course, all this depends on your label being well known for putting out good music, which of course we would ;).

The second is that there is this GIANT empty space in the Chicago music scene. There are so many many bands that are so good that just can't get up to the surface for air. Those awesome bands eventually die out in this watered down scene full of shitty dance pop bands. The focus of this whole conglomerate would be to focus on Chicago scene bands and helping them. Even ones we weren't representing. Just help them put tours together or get promo stuff in other cities, if we had the contacts. Use what we can to push these bands up. Don't get me wrong there are mediums that are trying to do that in Chicago, but someone are falling by the wayside terribly inadequate. Like Cresendo Magazine, which is a really awesome local magazine. They are doing good awesome stuff for a lot of local bands, but there seems to be an exclusive group of people that are getting into the zine.

I have a lot of ideas floating in my head about everything I want to do. As I was telling Dave yesterday, its a matter of starting a foundation with the label and developing these other things out of the bricks from the bands we represent. OR a matter of winning the lottery which is 145 million tonight. Then we could do everything we want in like a year. haha.

Hopefully, you guys will see and be apart of all these ideas. The best part of all my friends is not only are they all willing to help, but they are all really good at things that are really helpful. I have a whole team at my disposal who want to help create this giant beast because they care about music. Even the people that can't write articles or write code are willing to bust their asses in anyway they can. And that's fucking awesome. I think that message gets lost with a lot of these "success" stories. Like the Metro or Fat Wreck Chords or Epitaph. These awesome establishments weren't built because of Joe Shannahan or Fat Mike or Brett Gurewitz. All these people that have really awesome legacies wouldn't be any where if they didn't get help. These businesses were built from the neck breaking work from bands and friends and opportunities. Hopefully, we can do that too.

-Chris

"Sweet New Tat Chris" - "Thanks Guys!"

So yesterday Eileen and I went to Tattoo Factory (on Broadway just north of Montrose) to use the giftcard that she gave me for Christmas to get a tattoo. And the results are awesome. This scary looking guy named Phil ------------->
did it for me and I think it came out awesome. It's pretty simple, but leaves room to go back and add more stuff to it that I want and, honestly, I think I found the guy that I want doing the rest of my tattoos. Read his bio here.





Anyway, here it is.

Dave Grohl will forever be drunk in this dvd

So, today is Friday....It feels like Monday. It's totally ridiculous. I can't help being really confused every single time I realize it's Friday. This disorientation comes from not being in Chicago for a week due to Christmas and New Years. I certainly hope that everyone had a good holiday with family and such. I had a blast this past week, but it's good to be home and back to normalcy.

Right now I'm at work, but was never told that we didn't have to come in today, so it's just myself and office Chris. We are watching the Foo Fighters DVD that I bought with my Borders gift card. It's the Foo live at Wembley Stadium in London. It's two nights of sold out 86,000 people. Meaning that roughly 170,000 people saw Foo Fighters one of these two days. Ridiculous. I've already watched the DVD, but office Chris hasn't so I'm happy to watch it again. Regardless though, Dave Grohl is totally drunk on this DVD. He slurs his words and everything. It's hilarious. Either way, no matter how drunk he gets I'd still sleep with him and in fact may even make it more plausible the more drunk he is... Long story short the Foo Fighters are fucking incredible. Towards the end of the set on the DVD they have the remaining members of Led Zepplin come out and they play a couple of tasty jams together. One of the songs Taylor Hawkins (foo drummer) sings and he's so awkward as the lead singer, which is probably partially why Taylor Hawkins and The Coat Tail Riders failed.

Moving on to Chris Shiflett, Foo Fighters lead guitar player. What an unbelievably odd cat. So when he's not playing in front of 170,000 people he's on tour with Me First and The Gimmie Gimmies. That just seems hilariously odd to me. Anyone else?

Anyway, Christmas was fanatastic. I got tons of odds and ends stuff. Lots of clothes and giftcards...well pretty much exclusively clothes and gift cards. Mostly to Urban Outfitters....Which means I bought a cardigan and some other really hipster stuff, which should go well when I get my glasses back next week....

It was also really nice to hang out with family and friends. Kicking back, having a break from work, and relaxing.

Then...um...New Years was extremely fun. I went to Eileen's cousin's wedding at The Barn of Barrington, which has this hilarious medieval look to it. There were suits of armor and everything was wood. It was the set of the "Holy Diver" video. Awesome. Then at midnight we drank and were merry. Went back to the hotel and crashed hard. On New Years day Eileen and I stayed out in the suburbs went shopping for a bit, then ate dinner at my rents and then I took her home.

And here I am dead tired. Thinking about catching some zzzz's on the couch in the other office. Maybe I will....Maybe I won't....

Anyway, I'm out for right now...Balls.

-Chris

Shit!

I made a twitter....
http://twitter.com/awaketoanalarm

Essentially its for random things that piss me off in the moment
Update your RSS feeds....NOW!

-Chris

This is that automatic I stay fresh like I'm wrapped in plastic

So, I downloaded the new Common record (thus the title of this blog) and I have to say that I like it WAY more than the new Kanye record, which as I stated earlier, blows big nuts.

I also got the new Thrice DVD, which is fucking awesome. Its not like their other DVD which has interviews and stuff like that. It's just a live set with a completely awesome set list. Combining songs all the way back to Illusion of Safety with mixes of Artist in the Ambulance and various songs from the Alchemy Index.

I also finally put the scrobbler for Last.Fm on my Mac, since my account was looking pretty sad and had read Fall Out Boy for several months now. It now should read Common and Thrice. Hooray!

Anyway, moving on to less nerdy things...

I've had this rental car for over a week now. I guess its going to take three weeks for my car to get done with a bill of like 4,500 bucks. Which is steep. I still haven't heard from the insurance company as to whose problem this is, but I guess that makes it not mine?

I've never had a rental car before, but they are pretty ridiculous. Like this car is a Kia Rio and it's a huge piece. Of course, I had no say in what car I was going to get. This one was in the price range of the insurance, therefore, that's what they give me. It's the one of the oddest pieces of machinery I've ever come across. It doesn't have power windows, power locks or power mirrors. It does, on the other hand, have satellite radio, auxiliary out put (for iPods) and a USB port, which doesn't like my iPhone or iPod, so essentially is useless. The conversation literally went like this with the gentleman from Enterprise:

"Well we have the Kia Rio, which is an 09 and doesn't have a lot of miles on it"

"Looks like a piece"

"Well it's got satellite radio"

And it does, but everything else on it is very much manual. I have to suck it up because I'll have this car till the week of Christmas. Although it does drive like a charm. It took a bit to get used to the steering and brakes and what nots, but eventually everything was alright.

Speaking of Christmas, its utterly ridiculous that Christmas is 2 weeks. Better do some shopping? Yeah, I better.

I'm also the only person I know that wants everything spoiled. I make people tell me the twists and endings in movies. Like you know when you have that conversation where the other person starts telling you the movie and then says, "Well, are you gonna see it?" or "Do you want me to tell you anymore?" And then most people (unless it's a terrible movie anyway) are like no don't tell me I'll see it. I'm like, "Fuck tell me what happens. I'll see it anyway.)

So, I made Eileen tell me what she is getting me for xmas because I'm a jerk like that. In fact, I drove her to go get it. Needless to say, I'm getting a new tattoo for xmas. And I've already decided what I'm going to get. It's going to be a sweet looking Sailor Jerry tattoo on the inside of my left arm (where I'm slowly but surely building my sleeve [length has yet to be determined]).

Then there is New Years, which is going to be different this year (for me at least). I'm going to be spending it with Eileen and her family at her cousin's wedding. They are getting married on New Years Eve or at Midnight or something like that. Who knows? Probably Eileen. Anyway, its an excuse for me to drink at an open bar for New Years. I love weddings though. I'm pretty good when it comes to cutting up a rug, so I'm excited to break loose a little bit.

On a different note...

Recording (the little that I've done) has been going extremely well.

Dane (pictured here making a silly face) did all the work on Sunday. Well I guess George (or engineer) did a bunch too. Josh, Dave, Emily and I pretty much sat around and watched Dane get good and sweaty while he worked out all the drum parts for the songs, but he did an incredible job and George mixed them a bit and sent them to us and they sound great, so we are really looking forward to finishing it up this weekend. It will, on the other hand, be a lot more work for me this time and much more relaxation on Dane's part.

We are really excited about finishing it and combining it with The Nominees Are's stuff and really working hard at getting it released and a lot of press behind it. I got a hold of AP this week and we are taking out ad space in March (I think), which is pretty exciting to actually get in AP. You don't have to be a negative nancy about it I realize that they put whoever will pay them in the magazine. It's still neat...

We have, on the other hand, been doing this hilarious video blogs lately. I don't say a lot in them, but they are still rather entertaining and very short so you should check them out: here. The blogs are to keep our fans, which evidentially we have, in the loop about how awesome we are.

Well that's about it for now. Check back later maybe more cool stuff?

-Chris

Happy Birthday To Me!

Well at the insistence of my wonderful girlfriend I'm writing a blog about my fantastic birthday celebration.

Normally, I don't really care all that much about my birthday. It just seems like another day of the year that goes by and then I turn a different age without anything really all that special attached to it. But this year seemed pretty special or at least Eileen made it pretty special. Don't get me wrong I've had a blast for past birthdays, especially my 21st...yikes!

First, she gave me presents on everyday leading up to my birthday or rather everyday that she saw me. Most of which included candy and monster, but also notes and leaves. It's definitely the thought that counts and that was very sweet. Then because she wouldn't be able to see me on my actual birthday we had a birthday celebration at my apartment on the Wednesday before hand. Unfortunately, that included my assholes roommates eating all my birthday chili and birthday brownies...

ANYWHO...

Eileen came over to my apartment and made us chili, which was unbelievably delicious by the way, and then she gave me my actual birthday presents which were: a awesome t-shirt that had a Four Year Strong (band) lyric on it. She, of course, doesn't like how it turned out, but I thought it was awesome, also a three pound bag of gummy bears (the German ones that are better than anything other ones), and a gift card to Urban Outfitters so I can try and be more of a hipster than I am now... She decorated the apartment with balloons and banners that read "Chris' Birthday Celebration." Then like a sweet heart took the family pictures we have been waiting to take of Rich, Dave, and myself. Speaking of which we need addresses of people so that we can send you our holiday cards.

Eileen made my birthday or pre-birthday very special and for that I thank her very much.

Then on Saturday we had a show in Dekalb, which wasn't one of the greatest venues we played at, but the promoter was really nice and gave us more than our fair share of door which was really awesome. After the show was the really awesome part. We went over to friends of ours James, Bryan, and Dan (the guys from The Nominees Are) house and we played a sort of acoustic set at their party, which was a fucking blast. We also played The Nominees Are song that we are recording "Cure For the Common Crush" and James (their lead singer) sang for it. We had a really awesome time there. We started our set at midnight and everyone in the room toasted to Josh and me for our birthday. Then The Nominees Are played their set and included a handful of Alkaline Trio songs and Fall Out Boy songs, which got the whole room jumping and singing. All in all, it was a really awesome experience and fun time.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with those guys again and really get to talk to them a bit more about the split that we are doing with them, which we are all ridiculously stoked for. We just have a lot of big ideas for it. We go into the studio the first weekend in December at Gravity with George Balogi, who worked on "Sufferer and The Witness" and with some friends of ours in Love Me Electric. They highly recommended him to us as well.

The Nominees Are going into the Lucky Boys Confusion studio the first couple weeks in January. It'll be really awesome to use both those producers as names attached to this record, as well as, James told us we could use whatever quote we want to from the lead singer of Armor For Sleep. All really beneficially things when trying to get good press on the record to really get our name out there.

Speaking of press on this record, it looks like this will be the first release on Rockasaurus Records. Hopefully you'll be hearing more from that end of stuff soon. I have a meeting with Jim and Anthony at Minty Fresh to help us get all the legal stuff set up. It's really nice to have people to help us out with is since we are complete noobs. I know a bit about the contracts, but not enough to be totally set and not screw over people or get screwed over.

We have HUGE plans for the release show of this record. It looks like we'll have LBC as our huge band attached and it'll probably at the Metro too. All those things we are working out the details for.

Then tour this summer to support the record, which is tentatively titled "Roller Rinks and Stiff Drinks," which basically is the complete sum of the first night we met The Nominees Are at Crystal Wheels. After the show we went and drank till 7am. Awesome.

We are just so excited to work with these guys because they are just really cool and fun guys. Most importantly, they love music and just hanging out and having fun and that's all we are interested in having a good time. It's just really refreshing to be working with guys that are having fun with what they love doing and that in turn makes the whole experience a blast. It's going to be awesome sharing a studio, record, and tour with these guys.

"Putting the punk back in pop"

ALSO

I'm listening to the new Kanye record right now and honestly...it blows. There's not as much hip-hop in this record its more of an R&B record and if I really wanted to listen to that I would listen to someone that has a good voice like John Legend (and if you're interested check out "Once Again" solid record). But people fell in love with Kanye after Gold Digger, which with the help of Jaime Foxx (who is also putting a new record...hilarious) was a really awesome HIP HOP track. Then "Graduation" came out and made Kanye a fucking staple in the hip-hop pop world and I honestly think this record is going to hurt him in the frat boy market. It'll sky rocket in the R&B category probably, but I don't think frat guys, before they ruffie up the first girl of the night, aren't really going to put on "Streetlights" to get their blood flowing from the steroids like "Stronger" did.

There will probably be the initial push that people pick up the record because Kanye put out a new record and they heard "Love Lockdown," so they bought it. After that I think they'll really see the sales dip and then we'll probably hear Kanye on the news whining about people not listening to him because he's a real big baby like that. That's ok though, he'll be on every other hip hop/R&B female singer/rappers records because people will still think he's cool.

I just heard the lyric "You think your shit don't stink, but you are Mrs. Pee You"

Alright I have to go to bed, because unlike Dave whos a total asshole I have to work tomorrow.

Fuck you boners I'm out.

-Chris

Trying to stay occupied

So today I brought my laptop with me to work because I wanted to keep working on trying to get Left For Dead (a sweet zombie survival game) Demo working on the windows side of my mac. So I'm impatiently waiting for the drivers to download (long story; don't ask), I decided that I would write a blog.

I've started work at the Metro, which has been really sweet, but sometimes a little slow (note: I'm writing a blog and downloading a video game). Work at Direction is getting tedious and boring, but it barely pays the bills so I guess I'll keep working there. Until maybe I find something that pays me more money because it seems like everyone is getting jobs that's making them more money. It totally goes to show that if you work somewhere you want to work (Metro) you don't get paid dick for it, but if you work some corporate job like Josh (Chase) you get paid a lot of money. Also Carly is now a manager at Hot Topic making WAY more than I do, so she better pull her fucking weight and get us an in-store there....

Last Thursday Dave, Rich, Lily, Eric Wilson (I really want to call him Brian Wilson....fuck it). Last Thursday Dave, Rich, Lily, BRIAN Wilson, Josh and I all went to what's called the Most Interesting Show In The World. Which was basically a side show. There were a lot of freaks there. Needless to say it was insane and hilarious all rolled in one. I could go into a lengthy description about them, but instead I'll give you their names and you can youtube them, they all have videos, in order of most to least awesome.

1. Lilia Stepanova (who is hot a twists her self in a bunch of ways)
2. Kenichi (awesome dancer guy)
3. Leonid The Magnificent (you wouldn't believe me if I told you)
4. Mark Faje (balanced a running lawn mower on his chin)
5. Johnny Fayva (hilarious)

There were other acts, but not nearly as cool. We got in for free because....ya know I know a guy that got me some tickets...no big deal...

Anyway, the night of this show I was helping at the Metro set up and I got in a car accident. Don't worry I'm fine (that's pretty much for Jenna because I know the rest of you don't really care). I was pulling through an intersection, long story short, a woman barreled though and t-boned me. My car still moves, but the passenger side doors, front and back, don't open. Hopefully, I can get it fixed soon if my brother ever calls the insurance company like he was supposed to do last Friday...

Here is where I was going to go into a long winded rant about how car accidents are the silliest thing in the world due to the other person always getting pissed at you for their fault while they have two little kids in the car and clearly are teaching them that it's OK to swear and blame other people for your problems. Also how insurance is the biggest fucking joke in the world. You pay mounds and mounds of money to get your car fixed when it needs to be, but they still make you pay a deductable when you do get it fixed. BUT I won't rant about that...

The American Autumn is going really well. We have a show this Saturday at Just for Fun in McHenry with a couple other really cool bands that seem to have some pull, so hopefully that will go well have be lots of fun at the same time. We are currently trying to get recording figured out. Due to Atlas not returning emails and Gravity giving us a bugets thats...well way over budget, we are currently shopping studios to get quotes. We are all extremely anxious to get new stuff up and done with so we can release this split, but as usual, it's taking much much longer than anticipated.

Also my birthday is coming up....
"Hey just wanted to let you know that my birthday is coming up"

"Hey just wanted to let you know I didn't get you anything"

My loving and wonderful girlfriend has been giving me little gifts nearly every day until my birthday comes where she gives me my real present? Its mostly candy and some other neat stuff, but I haven't been short of bulls-eyes lately (and fuck off to the people that say they don't like bulls-eyes).

I think thats as much of an update as you are going to get. I still have 12 min to go for this download, but I supposed I should get some work done. Or at least continue to drink Dr. Pepper out of this coffee mug (it gives me cred because it sort of looks like coffee).

"Why is your coffee carbina..."
"So's your face"

-Chris