My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

Paul Simon - writing "Still Crazy After All These Years"

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:10:00 +0000

I've been on a huge Paul Simon kick lately, both listening and learning - meaning that I'll never truly get the hang of playing - his songs, and I found a great clip of him playing an unfinished "Still Crazy..." with Dick Cavett.

The bridge has always been the most striking part of the tune, and to watch a master songwriter like Simon weigh his options about where to go next is really fascinating.
"Have you ever reached for your C-sharp and gotten your C-natural instead?" is pretty priceless as well.

If nothing else, think about this: how badass a songwriter do you have to be for Ray Charles to cover you?

----------------------
Ian Messinger
My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

Posted via email from My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

Banjo Lovers - looking for a social networking site?

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:21:00 +0000

Interested in learning the banjo? Visit the Tony Trischka School of Banjo for FREE video lessons.
You can even upload videos of your own playing and get some one-on-one pointers from Tony Trischka himself.

A video tutorial service and social network for banjo lovers - all this from a man who passes his time with Steve Martin:

Posted via email from My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

Les Paul - who knew?

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:41:00 +0000

How High The Moon by Les Paul & Mary Ford
Download now or listen on posterous

How-High-The-Moon.mp3 (1948 KB)

The first Les Paul song I ever heard was "How High the Moon" on the soundtrack to My Favorite Year. For years, I assumed Mary Ford's stack of 12 vocal tracks was the Andrews Sisters, and that Les was an entire small combo. I always loved the song, and I was thrilled (and a little embarrassed) to finally discover after his passing that it was only him and Mary playing around with the multi-track recording methods that he invented. Who knew?

There's a lot of excellent footage of the then-married couple playing together on variety shows - see one of my favorites below, where Mary really shines:

An amazing, amazing guy - I could listen to that intersection of jazz, rockabilly and country all day, and the modern era of recording might very well not exist without his innovations.

Posted via email from My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

Wild Things and a Tribute to Nilsson's "The Point!"

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:44:00 +0000

Beloved children's books! Beloved children's cartoons! Oh boy! October is going to be a quite a month. First, Where the Wild Things Are finally comes out on October 16th:

There's even an excerpt of Dave Eggers' Where the Wild Things Are screenplay / novelization available courtesy of The New Yorker.

On Oct. 27th, we get a tribute to Harry Nilsson's The Point!, one of my all-time favorite records and movies. Featuring covers from Devotchka, Martha Wainwright, Andrew Bird and more, you can stream the songs here:
http://amanorecordings.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-point

The record benefits Eggers' 826NYC, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literacy and writing skills to kids in NYC and beyond.

Speaking of totalitarian cultural regimes (and yes, that's essentially what The Point! is about), I'm flying through Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn - a novel about the gradual outlawing of the alphabet on the fictional island of Nollop - and it scares the hell out of me for some reason. I highly recommend it for the subversive and literate (or even literally subversive), especially at a whopping $5 from The Strand.

Posted via email from My Other Centaur...is a LADY Centaur

"Where the Wild Things Are" movie pics

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:27:00 +0000

Coolest thing I've ever seen? Probably. The Dave Eggers-penned film finally comes out in October, and the trailer debuts this Friday in front of Monsters vs. Aliens.

See more at FilmDrunk

Twitter for Musicians Pt 1: The Basics

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:10:00 +0000

On the eve of so many excellent Philly bands releasing new albums this summer, I've noticed that none of them has a Twitter account. That's a real shame, so here's a how-to (and, more importantly, why-to) guide to using Twitter as a tool for promoting your music.

Twitter is a microblogging service that mimics Facebook's "Status Update" feature: users create 140-character "tweets" and add Followers who are automatically fed these messages via Twitter.com or text messages.

You can also reply to other users (@UserName), send a private Direct Message (D UserName) or start and follow topics (check out #ModernFairy and #LitDish -- both awesome).

At first glance it seems like just another place for personal updates that no one cares about, but if you use it to announce things other than "I am eating a baloney sandwich - ACK!", it's a really powerful (and mobile) real-time marketing device. It attracts tens of thousands of new users each month, and it has grown more than 600% in the last 12 months.
Read "Twitter - the next big source of blog traffic" for more about setting up an account.

Why Musicians Need Twitter:

1. Your fans are already on Twitter
...and so are the journalists and bloggers who review your albums. Trust me, you'll be surprised by how many people you know on here. A simple search using TwitterSearch will also show you all the tweets containing your name - a great place to start adding followers who are already interested your music.

(You should already be receiving automatic updates from Google whenever your name is dropped in news, blogs, videos or other groups - if not, set them up at Google Alerts)

2. Twitter works with your cell phone
Let's say you just finished your sound check and no one has shown up for a gig. Simply send a tweet via text to 40404, and Twitter can notify all your followers that they are missing the best show of your career! Better yet, if they have your profile set up for notifications, it will send an alert to their cell phone.

If you're a touring musician or stuck in the studio, Twitter is a great way to get around spotty Internet access and a lack of time to update your website. Simply text updates from the road and have them fed into your other online profiles.

Services like TwitPic are also great for instantly uploading photos from the road, right from your phone. That burrito you ate with Lyle Lovett? Show everyone in just a few minutes!

3. Twitter integrates with your other social networking services
You can set Twitter to automatically change your Facebook status to your latest tweet, or use a service like TwitterFeed and allow Twitter to automatically tweet your latest blog post, Flickr upload, show calendar update and more.

When I publish this post, Twitter will automatically create a tweet entitled "Twitter for Musicians Pt 1" with a link to this blog (check it out here). At the same time, Twitter will change my Facebook status to the title of that tweet. My Twitter account also imports my latest GoodReads updates, Blip.fm updates and my shared Google Reader items - it saves me tons of time, and it makes sure that my friends who are on Twitter but not Facebook / mailing lists / near a computer can get the same info as everyone else in real time.

-----------------------------------------------
Still not sold? Just take my word for it, set up an account, check out the articles below, and Part II will go into much more detail about integrating Twitter with your other online marketing outlets. And follow me on Twitter when you get there!

Blues Animations - Robert Johnson & Leadbelly

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:24:00 +0000

A follow-up to yesterday's post about Poetry Animations. Both seem to respond to the actual sound waves, with the artist's lips moving in response to any volume shifts -- obviously it's a lot more effective with poetry readings, since Robert Johnson is "singing" all of his guitar stops (the blinking is a nice and very eerie touch, however). Here are some of the best:

Leadbelly "Looky look yonder" Blues movie animation
Uploaded by bluesanimations

Robert Johnson "Phonograph "Blues"Movie Animation
Uploaded by bluesanimations

From Jim Clark, aka Blues Animations on DailyMotion.com

SeatKarma.com - Concert Seating Finder

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Finally, democracy for concert seating! SeatKarma.com, where "no two tickets are the same," gives users the ability to view all available seats for a show.

"SeatKarma’s search engine covers 99% of tickets available for purchase online by retrieving live ticket information from a couple of hundred secondary market ticket brokers. The cost comparison is then augmented with venue mapping available for approximately 1600 venues. 1300 of these are “live maps” which place a marker on the section where the seat will be located. The remaining 300 are small venues such as bars where seat mapping doesn’t apply. The company claims it now has more live maps than any other comparison engine on the market." (from TechCrunch.com)

I just bought tickets for the Clapton / Winwood show in Philly and spent 20 minutes in an Internet queue wondering what (if any) seats were still available. Never again!

Popular Penguins: Retro Penguin Books Styling

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:53:00 +0000

I'm a sucker for punchy, to-the-point design, and old paperbacks from the early 60s are a great example. Penguin's division in Australia recently started re-issuing a collection of classic and modern books with the retro cover treatment, and sales have more than doubled their projections.

I love any story where books sell well -- take a look:

clipped from network.nationalpost.com

The series of 50 books - 25 fiction and 25 non-fiction were redesigned to recall Penguin's first paperbacks, published in the 30s. Then, the softcovers were colour coded - orange books were fiction, blue for non-fiction. The new retro Penguins all carry the same orange cover.

"If you're standing looking at those books you know
subconsciously or by implication that all of these books are going
to be OK," said Peter Blake, the company's Australian sales
director who conceived the idea of the series.

"Even if you've not heard of Geoffrey Robertson's Crimes
Against Humanity you think, 'It's part of the collection, I
trust the brand and it's surrounded by all these other classics by
authors like Waugh or Fitzgerald so it must be OK.' "

To have a look at the entire series, visit Popular Penguins.

Dead Poets Society, the Animated Series

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Very cool stuff, and more than a little bit creepy - check out T.S. Eliot, Christina Rossetti and James Joyce below.

clipped from network.nationalpost.com

Poetry Animations is a YouTube channel put together by British videographer Jim Clarke. His project animated old images of famous to make it appear as if they are reading their poems. Some of the recordings are the poet's reading their works. Where archived readings were unavailable, they are voiced by other readers.

TiVo Guilt, Opportunity Costs and more

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:28:00 +0000

A brief explanation about 3 months without a blog post: dedicating this blog to music alone is just too limiting. Call it a byproduct of my job navigating the Internet, call it my background in Literature, call it my undying quest for fun-yet-useless facts and articles, but this blog needs to start thinking outside the box of "local music."

Part of my frustration in updating is below: TiVo guilt (or in my case Bookmarking and Google Reader guilt) is what happens when technology gives you seemingly unlimited content choices, but time and the need to sleep give you only so many hours in a day to absorb what you've collected.

I definitely suffer from this, but hopefully the content changes here will alleviate some of that. Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe you've bookmarked 30 sites about Garfield minus Garfield but you don't have time to keep up every day?

clipped from www.cnn.com

"Economists call this 'opportunity costs,' " explains Berens. "You're sitting there and you have to weigh, well, 'I have to watch this thing, because I promised myself when I told TiVo ... I want the whole season of that! Go get it! And go get things like it!' And so you've committed to this decision and it's a burden -- suddenly your relaxation has turned into more work."

"With infinite media, you have infinite choices, and therefore you have infinite opportunity costs," he says. "Your satisfaction index of the thing you actually choose can never be equivalent to the infinite opportunity costs, so we're in this position of being behind the cognitive eight-ball all the time."

Devon Sproule Interview Pt II

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:00:00 +0000

So I stand by my earlier statement: This blog is about musical discovery, not criticism, so I'll leave you with a bevy of Devon Sproule songs and links and let you figure things out for yourself.

Devon Sproule Interview Pt II from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Devon Sproule & Paul Curreri - "You Can Leave Your Hat On" -- Download now!

Paul Curreri & Devon Sproule Valentine Duets - 5 free albums!

Devon Sproule's recent listens:

Matt Curreri & the Exfriends on MySpace

Jacqueline Stemm on MySpace

Mantler on MySpace

I will say that you'd be a fool not to already own Devon's Keep Your Silver Shined, seeing as its one of the best records I've picked up in the last two years. Confident, relaxed, accessible and terrifying in its execution once you realize how young Devon is and what a fantastic musical future she has ahead of her.

Devon Sproule Interview Pt 1

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:39:00 +0000

Since this blog is so much more about musical discovery than music criticism, do yourself a favor and discover (or learn more about) Devon Sproule below. This, ladies and gentlemen, is real folk music and what real folk music should be. More to come this week!

Devon Sproule Interview Pt 1 from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Devon Sproule - "1340 Chesapeake St" from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Monday Funday - Halloween edition

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:36:00 +0000

Okay, it's time to try a brand new, uber-engaging feature called "Monday Funday." I'll post a question or a list (hopefully) each week and take comments and submissions until Friday, at which point I'll post a "Friday Funday" follow-up with links to download everything. Complicated? Let's do a live one:

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and most of my memories of childhood revolve around this time of year. Whether I was dancing to "The Monster Mash" or watching The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (see below), this time of year was it for me. This week's entry will be the beginning of a Halloween hit list, starting with Bing Crosby's "The Headless Horseman" and Otis Redding's "Trick or Treat."

Bing Crosby - "The Headless Horseman"

Otis Redding - "Trick or Treat"

Please leave comments with your suggestions, and make sure to check back Friday for the potentially embarrassing lack of results. Huzzah!

885 Essential XPN Songs Countdown - All Hail Richard Thompson!

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:23:00 +0000

I'm always a little skeptical of XPN's annual countdown extravaganza, probably because the "Greatest Artists" and "Greatest Albums" of previous years were way too heavy on classic rock. On top of that, last year's "Most Memorable Musical Moments" was a very outside-the-box concept that had some great community-building, blog-ready moments, but it was a little too intangible to be really significant.

This year's "885 Essential XPN Songs" countdown (obnoxiously interrupted and overshadowed by the Fall Fund Drive) got a lot of things right. Take a look at the top 5 tunes:

5. Wilco - "Impossible Germany"
4. Kirsty Maccol - "In These Shoes"
3. Jeff Buckley - "Hallelujah" (3rd version of the song included in the countdown)
2. David Grey - "Babylon"
1. Richard Thompson - "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"

I can't even tell you how proud I am to live in a city where a Richard Thompson tune is the most essential anything. I was seriously moved -- much more so than I am watching the Phillies get shut out in Game 2 -- so kudos to XPN and all my fellow listeners. Even the top 20 looks good, with Amos Lee and the long forgotten Alexi Murdoch both making appearances.

Still, Barnes and Barnes "Fish Heads" is my top XPN song. A Kid's Corner childhood is a hard thing to overcome....

And what about you folks? Any favorite XPN-centric tunes, or a similar disgust with Helen Leight's playlists?

The Band - "Georgia on my Mind" blip.fm

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Devon Sproule blip.fm

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Robert Plant officially ends Led Zeppelin reunion rumors

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:22:00 +0000

I'm so happy that Robert Plant has proven himself to be the smartest -- and most surprisingly smart -- of the aging Rock Gods of yore. According to a message on his website, Plant has no plans to tour within the next two years, and "all the musicians that surround the [Led Zeppelin reunion] story are keen to get on with their individual projects and move forward." Clearly that's not the case for Jimmy "Say, Coverdale / Page wasn't a bad idea" Page, but thank you, Robert Plant, for having the common sense to not butcher those high notes.

And why should he? His collaboration with Alison Krauss has been wildly successful and has yielded a whole new sound and audience for him. In fact, he's the only member of the "old guard" to do anything interesting and relevant in recent memory -- eat your hearts out Mick, Eric and Pete. With any luck, the next two years will see a follow-up from the duo and give some late-career credit to a singer with an amazing feeling for blues that was so often buried by Page's histrionics (and I love Led Zep, but their day had passed well before Bonzo died).

Seriously, how is this version of "Black Dog" not dozens of times more interesting than anything involving Jimmy Page?

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - "Black Dog" live

Rowe / Grylls '08

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:35:00 +0000

Fixing the economy is going to be a Dirty Job, especially in this Bear Market. May I present the finest political solution of all:

Upcoming Philly shows

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000

...that you should be at (but really, that's implied, isn't it?)

9/12: Sisters 3 (cd release show) - Johnny Brenda's
9/19: George Stanford w/ Chris Kasper - Johnny Brenda's

9/24: Devon Sproule w/ Carsie Blanton - Steel City Coffeehouse
9/27: Hoots & Hellmouth - Johnny Brenda's
9/30: Carolina Chocolate Drops - World Cafe Live
11/13: Ben Sollee - World Cafe Live

Dana Alexandra Interview Pt. 2

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:54:00 +0000

Dana Alexandra Interview Pt 2 from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Dana Alexandra - "Running Back" from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Dana Alexandra MySpace

Upcoming shows:

Aug 27: The Bitter End (NYC)
Aug 28: Carroll Community College (Westminster, MD)
Aug 29: The Crimson Frog (Camp Hill, PA)
Sept 4: Uncle Mike's (NYC)
Sept 5: Assumption College (Worcester, MA)
Sept 11: Regency Cafe (Lansdowne, PA)
Sept 18: The Living Room (NYC)
Sept 27: Harp and Fiddle (York, PA)
Oct 5: Spike Hill Pub (Brooklyn, NY)
Nov 21: Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA)
Nov 29: Burlap & Bean (Newtown Square, PA)

Dana Alexandra Interview Pt. 1

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:30:00 +0000

Dana Alexandra - "Hand Me Down" -- download now!

Seeing Dana Alexandra last week at The Fire made me realize what was missing from the last two shows I saw her play: an audience slowly filling the room and being won over one person at a time.

Like most of the best things in life, finding Dana's music is all about being in the right place at the right time. I can't imagine anyone not being impressed by her voice once they hear her -- the problem is getting the People to the Voice. Over the course of a breathless 45-minute set which featured new songs, old songs, increasingly unmanageable hair and a story about how boa constrictors size you up before eating you, she won over a good-sized crowd for an unknown performer opening a show at Philly's grungeiest of grungy venues.

But the real magic happens on her debut album. Dana uses harmonies the same way Keith Richards and Jimmy Page use guitar riffs, as something both stylized and structural, decorative and devastating. The songs are catchy, her voice and melodies grow on you quickly and unexpectedly, extra touches (piano and ukelele) never seem unneccessary or gimmicky, and the "live-on-the-floor" immediacy really shines through.
My prediction: If she keeps writing this way, she'll be one of the biggest singer-songwriter draws in the Philly scene within a year. But don't take my word for it -- see her live at Milkboy Coffee in Ardmore on August 21st, and check back here tomorrow for Pt 2.

Dana Alexandra Interview Pt 1 from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Dana Alexandra - "Dont" from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Teitur (or teetering on the brink)

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Perhaps...just perhaps...some of you noticed last weekend that the world seems to be coming to an end:

Russia invades democratic Georgia

Bernie Mac dies, and Isaac Hayes dies

Former Presidential candidate John Edwards admits to a 2006 affair

Bush suggests major (and majorly detremental) changes to the Endangered Species Act

Scientists activate the Hadron Collider, cross their fingers and rap

In Philly, however, it was an absolutely fantastic weekend, perfect for sitting on your porch, deck or cement slab with a cup of tea and reading a book. But what's a relaxing Saturday morning without the right soundtrack? Enter Teitur, Stockholm's current hot shit folk singer (I'm pretty sure those words have never been strung together before now):

Teitur - "The Singer"

Teitur - "Start Wasting My Time"

Paste describes him as "foremost a pop craftsman, something that's occasionally obscured by his favoring of minimalist strings, hushed backing harmonies and pulsating horn sections." That's pretty spot on: it's a haunting and spare album, but there are bursts of sing-along tunefulness (see the chorus of "Start Wasting My Time"). His voice falls somewhere between the matter-of-fact delivery of Ben Gibbard and the slightly hammy and bleating sound of the Decemberists' Colin Meloy.

It's a good record, start to finish. Check out the songs (remember to click "Download Original" on the right) and let me know what you think.

4 classic Sesame Street Musical Performances

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:56:00 +0000

I just came back from a Web Writing conference in Washington, DC, that famous "Land of Lincoln," "Cradle of Life" and "Sweet Home Chicago." I was hoping to make it down to the Jim Henson & the Muppets exhibit at the Smithsonian, but no such luck.
Instead, I'm paying tribute to the music of Sesame Street, which got its start on public television in DC 40 years ago. Here are some of my favorite "classic" performances:

James Taylor & Oscar the Grouch - "Whenever I See Your Grouchy Face"
Sure, James was probably on a heroin binge and hanging out at the dump when some cameras just happened to show up, but it doesn't mean it's not a good tune.

Stevie Wonder - "Superstition"
This is why Stevie was it in the 70s. The badass "too large for prime time" band, the 4 year-old go-go girl on the fire escape -- what more could you ask for?

Smokey Robinson - "You Really Got A Hold On Me"
There's a few seconds where that U gets a hold of him like only a trained physician should. Yikes!

Alice Cooper - "School's Out"
The adults are laughing because they know they're warping the minds of oh-so-many children.

If that's not enough for you, check out "Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music," a 3-disc retrospective of Sesame Street songs from 1968 - 2003 (although suspiciously absent is "Teeny Tiny Little Super Guy," my favorite song and segment when I was a kid).

Special thanks to The Daily Naked's collection of Sesame Street videos.

Hoots & Hellmouth Interview Pt. 2

ian.messinger@gmail.com (Ian) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0000

Hoots & Hellmouth - "This Hand is a Mighty Hand" from Ian Messinger on Vimeo.

Hoots & Hellmouth - "The Good I Know You Know"

A few months later -- okay, 6 months, several tours and the near completion of a yet-to-be-released album later -- I caught up with Burgundy Bearded Bard himself, Mr. Sean Hoots, to finish the interview (note: actual bearded status may vary by state and time of reading).

Me: "Folk Music" is usually defined in academic circles by two criteria: how the music is played (the sound being created by "unschooled" musicians using "rustic" instruments), or by who is playing the music ("the folks," as it were). But you guys have really invented a third criteria: the makeup of the audience, in this case a set of "folks" all their own who seem as integral to the band's force as the music itself. How do you explain the Populist aspect of the music and live performances?

Sean Hoots: i think music, in its very nature, is a unifying force. it's one of those few essential common threads that runs through every culture as far back as we can fathom. while there may be a visible physical difference between the performer and any given audience (but not always!), the music that is shared creates a free-access psychic superhighway that allows energy to travel both ways between the crowd and the stage. it's a complete circle...a closed circuit of spiritual shazaam. and no, the circle will not be broken. by and by, lord, by and by.

Me: You've said in Origivation that you "respect tradition but [aren't] trying to be traditional." Where do you see yourselves in the "folk music" tradition?

SH: like any other link in the chain...we're just happy to be strung along.

Me: Would you consider yourself part of the "Freak Folk" movement, or do you see yourselves as more traditional -- either through instrumentation or purpose -- than other acts labeled as such?

SH: i suppose we're all freakish in some manner given our disposition against the seeming status quo in our current culture. but at the same time, i am inextricably part of that very same culture just by being alive...producing expressions, commentary, explosions of untellable intent. we are all part of a greater fabric, but luckily we get to be in charge of our own little sections. i like to decorate mine with fragments and scraps from all over.

Me: Where does the new material fit into all of the above? How different is it from what's come before? (Feel free to plug the upcoming record -- and does it have a name or release date yet?)

SH: any new material is different from that which precedes it in linear terms only. taken as a whole, it all hovers about a central muse-axis (where x is spirit, y is flesh and z is the mind). we've been working a lot of these "newer" songs out in the live setting in recent months, and they're just about in fighting shape. we hope to release a fully realized recorded collection of them upon the masses in early '09 sometime.

Me: Going back to Andrew's story below about not having to come up with a name for the band, how do you turn what started out as a casual collective into a touring and recording workhorse? And what kind of implications and expectations does a sophomore album carry with it for a band that started as a happy accident?

SH: the thing about happy accidents that no one ever wants to speak to is that even though there may not be any tears shed (and thus it is more or less "happy"), there are still dents in your fender from the collision (it is, after all, an "accident," y'know?). but we've been banging around this ol' body with a hammer now for a good little while now, and we like the work. we've always been men of a puritan labor ethic. music provides the inspiration about which we are busy building a hive. we feel this music is worth cultivating and, ultimately, exploiting, and to that end, we've been lucky enough to find the assistance we need along the way from some very able-bodied and minded people who share our vision. as long as doors keep opening, we will continue to explore new rooms. the sophomore dance should be fun. butterflies in the stomach, a little too much of yer father's cologne...but even so, it's just a practice for the prom, so we're not applying the senior pressure just yet. i mean, it's just music, right?!

There will be more videos from the Fire performance up on YouTube in coming days -- just search for user "MyOtherCentaur" and revel in the glory.