The title of the post says it all. Come hang out with me and my band at Knitting Factory on Friday. It’s one of the best, coolest rock clubs in town, and we’ve got a fun group of fans and friends coming out (I’ll introduce you around). We’ll take the stage at nine–not sure what the cover is but it won’t be more than $10.
Also, it’s like the easiest club in town to get to on the subway. We’re talking express trains!
Posted in Band Stuff
Chikezie was awesome last night…I thought it was one of his best performances, and I’m really bummed that he got voted off. He’s got one of the most reliable, rich, accurate voices on the show. And Carly’s just totally average, every single week.
Skip to about halfway through the YouTube clip to get to the song.
Posted in Random Links
Wrote a big ol’ feature story for PCMag.com on the best keyboards for different types of PC users. I spent about six months collecting and testing different keyboards, writing reviews, and them compiling it all into this story.
The most important thing I look for in a good keyboard is comfortable ergonomics that don’t slow down my work flow–I like Microsoft’s comfort curve keyboards for that reason. I’m a very fast typist (it’s been Twittered that I’m actually the fastest typist, though it isn’t true) and my productivity depends on being able to type fast. Of course, typing quickly for 9 or 10 hours a day on an uncomfortable keyboard kills your wrists, and bass-players-slash-magazine-editors gotta protect the wrists, right?
Side note: If a doctor ever tells you he’s going to do an electromyogram test to see if you have carpal or cubital tunnel syndrome, find the nearest window and jump out of it. Regardless of what floor you’re on, you’ll come out better off in the end. Here’s how they test you for nerve damage in your elbow or wrist, according to my admittedly hazy and somewhat repressed memory:
Seriously, I felt like Jack Bauer being tortured for information, only I didn’t have any info to give up that would get them to stop. But I totally would have ratted out my CTU coworkers if it meant they’d either stop the testing or mercifully kill me.
The moral of this story for you kids: Don’t kill your wrists on a lousy keyboard or you’ll end up getting electrocuted and tortured!
Posted in Tech Stuff
Mere said goodbye to our horrific practice space in Hoboken tonight. It was basically a run-down warehouse that we called Saw Studios because it looked like the set of a horror movie. Seriously, it reeked of death and decay, with over 30 years of old musical equipment, bongs, mold, and spiders. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find a dead drummer or something under the stage, either. I’m sure it’ll be bulldozed to build some condos. Maybe they’ll be haunted by dead drummers.
So congrats on going so long without being condemned, Saw.
The Falling video (below) was shot on location at Saw, as was the Switches and Dials album art.
Posted in Band Stuff
Some good news on the band front: Mere is included in Tuesday’s New York Post. They give us a nice little shout-out in the MPFree section…Brett tells me it’s in the print edition as well as online but I stupidly forgot to pick up a copy. The blurb also mentions our show at the Knitting Factory on Friday night–be there! We’ll take the stage around 9.
Posted in Band Stuff
Dude, I hate HATE magazine/TV stories that rank stuff (yeah, I’m talking to you VH1 and E!). You guys want an inside tip on writing/editing a successful ranking story? Always make the last one or two controversial, and make sure there’s one pick that’s obviously wrong. If the viewers/readers don’t come away incensed or thinking they could do a better job, you’ve failed.
Anyway, saw a post on Idolator pointing to EW’s list of “The Indie Rock 25″…one year-defining artist per year for the past 25 years. There are plenty of incendiary choices–Bright Eyes for 2005? Really?–but what hit me is that almost every one of the bands on the list (which dates back to 1984, remember) is still recording albums, touring, or both.
1984: The Replacements, Let It Be
1985: The Smiths, Meat Is Murder
1986: R.E.M., Life’s Rich Pageant
1987: Dinosaur Jr., You’re Living All Over Me
1988: Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
1989: The Pixies, Doolittle
1990: Fugazi, Repeater
1991: My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
1992: Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
1993: Built To Spill, Ultimate Alternative Wavers
1994: Guided By Voices, Bee Thousand
1995: Archers Of Loaf, Vee Vee
1996: Belle And Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister
1997: Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West
1998: Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1999: Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
2000: Yo La Tengo, And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
2001: The Shins, Oh, Inverted World
2002: Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
2003: The White Stripes, Elephant
2004: Arcade Fire, Funeral
2005: Bright Eyes, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
2006: The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
2007: Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2008: Radiohead, In Rainbows
Side Note: Remember when The Hold Steady was supposed to be the Big New Band and everyone called “Boys and Girls in America” the album of the year? I saw them play in Brooklyn at the apex of their hype and nobody knew any of the words (and I was near the front, too!).
Posted in Random Links
This Lifehacker post about insomnia boosting your productivity is right on: From about 11:30 pm on, I’m crazy productive when I want to be. I used to spend this time “unwinding”–playing video games, channel surfing, reading a book–thinking that would help me fall asleep. I’ve recently learned to embrace the insomnia and use it to my advantage, though, and I get a lot more done. I don’t get much sleep, but I get a lot more done.
For some reason, after midnight I really do seem to write better, come up with better songs, and think more clearly, and new ideas come to me much more frequently. In fact, I can typically judge the value of a new idea by how much sleep I lose after it comes to me.
Maybe Arcade Fire is right and the need for sleep is all a big lie. Maybe polyphasic sleep really is the way to go (I’ve always wanted to try it). It’s 2:30 am, so it makes sense to me right now, but I’ll let you know if it still rings true tomorrow morning when I have to wake up.
Posted in Work Stuff
Check it out, this is the 60-second commercial we did for Haier that’s been playing during all the NBA games lately (if I didn’t have a TiVo I might have actually seen it on TV instead of YouTube).
Kinda cool, right? The song’s called (appropriately) Higher. It’s based on a tune Brian wrote a few months ago that was tentatively titled Reverend, and we’ve been going back and forth about whether we should release it or not. The YouTube comments are overwhelmingly positive and our MySpace inbox is full of messages from people looking for the song, so I think we’ll try to put it out there somewhere. If/when we make the full version available, I’ll post the link here.
Posted in Band Stuff
www.kylemonson.com has been a nascent wreck of a site for about four years now. Inspired by Natali’s WordPress site and Blake’s Tumblr blog, I decided I was finally going to fix that this week.
In the past two days, I’ve conducted auditions for the best blogging platform, building sites using WordPress, Tumblr, FriendFeed, and this here Blogger tool. The one that most intrigued me was Tumblr (def worth checking out), but I ended up settling on Blogger mainly because it’s what I used for my now-kinda-defunct toy blog, and I know my way around its CSS coding without resorting to Dreamweaver. Not that ToyBugle was in any way well-designed, mind you, but at least I was able to put left and right borders on it and strip the Blogger nav bar out.
Anyway, here it is. Hope you like it.
Posted in About the blog, Tech Stuff
