I’m not really one to piss on other people’s parades.  Well, not so much anymore.  But there I was minding my own business perusing Craig’s List in the musicians section (we’re interested in finding other hip folks to work with, multi-instrument people, or horn players, etc), and I came across this:

Brand new label ready to take over the world

Hey,

the music scene here sucks, and no one’s doing shit about it.

well, I am.

If your music is tight and you want to make money, well, so do i.

You know what to do.

Send me an e-mail with pictures, links to music, etc. This is a shot you don’t want to miss.

This is a shot you don’t want to miss.

There’s so much going on right now, that the only person anybody has to blame about being bored is his or her own damn self.  That really irritates me quite a bit.

Back to perusing.  If you like the kinda things we’ve been up to and you’d like a chance to jam with us, send us an e-mail: band@themeltdowns.com, say hello.

The process is a weird thing to arrive at. You don’t know how to do it, you just start hammering away until you have something that almost resembles something you like, and then you keep hammering at it until you make it worse or you can stand to show it to other people. Or you walk away for a bit and try something else. But you have to keep at it. No going here or there to do it, no listening to McLusky, no waiting for the right frame of mind, no way to practice, just sit down and write, damn it, write until your hand falls off. And then read it over to yourself a hundred times. And in my case, since I’m writing songs, play the parts over and over again, too, to see if they can drag the next line out of the idea, or if they melody can pull you forward, or if the words can give you any hint of how they want to be sung. And you keep at it. Even if nothing comes to you, you follow your mind anywhere, you hunt and scratch for leads. By nightfall you don’t have much, but you’ve slaved for it.

Been writing all day. Not much to show for it. My process is rusty. I love this whole No Job thing. By the end of the week if I keep this up I’m going to be a total champ. Made head-way on Shelter, a tune that we’ve been thinking of as “disco-punk”, and Left Turns, which is this meandering piece of craziness strung together by an incredibly poppy refrain that clearly needs to be about broken relationships. Isaac of Meets West is an inspiration for the music of that piece, all stemming from a comment he made about all of our “left turns”, parts of our songs that caught him by surprise. Yus. A good, productive afternoon of song-writing. Shelter still feels hacked out, it doesn’t quite have The Magic just yet, but it’s getting close. Left Turns just started happening, I opened my mouth to sing some stuff and actual words came out and down the path I went.  The great shining path of monster trucks. I’ll have to come back to it tomorrow to nail the second movement.

We’re itching to play shows again, and to start recording, so I feel a certain amount of healthy pressure to sit down whenever I have the time and knock these tunes out, it’s really taken us too long in my mind; but I’m a work-a-holic. Without a job. Ha!

~Billy Meltdown (currently listening to McLusky’s “Whoyouknow”)

We’re not quite there yet with enough material for a full record, having dropped a few of the tunes we used to do with Morgan.  We’re on a roll with getting together and building the new tunes, so last night we took an inventory of where we’re at:

(Mostly) Done Songs:

• Shine A Light (every band needs a song titled this)
• Left Turns (working title, needs lyrics/vox)
• Comeback
• Desolation
• Wave of the Future
• Slut
• Dick Dale the Vampire
• Megaman (working title, needs lyrics/vox)

Not-So-Done Songs:

• Disco Punk
• C-ville
• A Thousand Paper Cuts
• Digitz
• Hungarian Mode

The not-so-done tunes are mostly in the state of the ones that still need lyrics and vocals, except they are still not quite fully arranged and all that.  Heh, not that all the Mostly Done tunes are fully arranged.  But yes, this is where we are at.  Some serious writing over the next few weeks to see if we can flesh them out, and then hopefully recording will begin at the start of 2007.

And yes, we are flirting with booking neat little basement shows still.  Absolutely.  We’re just not trying to book any clubs at the moment, as it’s not really worth the time while we’re trying to do get the writing up to snuff.

I do suppose it’s time for some kind of Status Update around here. We’re finally settling into a new rhythm, I think, for working on material and rehearsing. It’s very clear, after feeling like the wind was knocked out of us at rehearsal Friday night (after finding out the show was canceled), that we crave playing live. And we’re also craving new material.

I was reading the Screaming Females’s blog the other day and couldn’t help but feel like a total slacker when I read this:

I feel like Screaming Females is operating at about 40% There is so much more to pump out of this machine. Be ready for at least another 10% coming out of us in the next few shows.

That band is freaking incredible, they work really hard, they go on tour, they put their hearts and most importantly their time and effort into it.

Even though I know what kind of personal insanity I’ve gone through in the last few months (the explosion or a relationship that had me depressed for two years, having to find a new home as a result, nearly going insane and being suicidal AND getting fired from my job), and also knowing how Adam was getting married and Lloyd was working like a dog to kick Mike Ferguson out of Congress (we’ll get the fucker in 08 dude!) … even knowing all this, I still feel like we’re operating at a -10% capacity of what we’re capable of doing. Clearly, we’ve all had a lot going on, but just as clearly, we’re not Getting Anywhere that is personally or artistically satisfying the way things have been going so it’s also time for us to step up. We’re going to be working together three times a week now, with a flexible schedule. We have songs to finish. We need to gin up new material. We have a record to record. We have t-shirts that need to be made, copies of the EP that need to be printed, pins to be ordered, we need to book ourselves some hot little shows with the right bands in the right places (awesomes shows like the paperspace gig that didn’t go down; fuck dive venues that nobody goes to anyway), like basements and house parties and lofts. I need to go over to Quick Pick and pick up those CD mailer envelopes by the gross and get back to stamping those fuckers and mailing out our bomb-funk EP.

There’s so much to do, and Winter is coming. Winter is always looking for something to do. Expect a lot from us, because I certainly do, and when I set out to do something, I get it done.

Speaking of new things, Adam has come up with a saucy new logo that lends itself to all sorts of interesting things, especially a long-awaited t-shirt:

We’re quite curious what you think. Comments are open.

We’re really sorry about this, but it looks like we have to rain-check on our Saturday night date with Taryn of Paperspace down in Philadelphia tomorrow night. Apparently Paperspace has been raided by cops and the poor girl now has to move the various shows she’s scheduled there to some other place (we hear tell that Danger Danger house is pretty freakin radical!) That’s really too bad, whoever called the cops on her just sucks.

Anyway, keep checking back, Taryn wants to reschedule us, and we want very much to play in Philly with Meets West, so we’re going to make it happen soon. Cheers to Taryn and Meets West for endeavoring to set it up!