THE REAL GOOD SHAPE OF THE SPIDER HOUSE

Hello guys,

You may recall that only just last month (well, three weeks and one day ago) we celebrated the cool quality of a friend of ours, LEVI JACOB BAILEY. If you don’t click the link, you could just scroll down the page; we don’t post as often as you’d probably like.

BUT, it’s a new month now, and it’s time for a new showcase—so without further ado, Miss April:

The above image is that of the group “Califone“, a fantastic band that Chris especially likes the best, and that Adrian likes too and that Joe hasn’t heard of.

Califone is incredible! The style of music is not similar to ours. Take as an example the song “Spider’s House” off of their last album, Roots and Crowns, as a good example of the music they make:

They are from Chicago, so we can almost see them around the corner as we are going to the drugstore! We call out after them, but they always seem to be just a little too far away!

BUT IN ORDER TO PROPERLY TRIBUTE A BUNCH OF REALLY GREAT GUYS,

We Did Our Own Cover Of SPIDER’S HOUSE for you to download! It was fun!
Man those guys are good!

When Chris was much smaller (this was maybe six years ago now?) he wanted nothing more than to be Califone, and so he wrote one song that demonstrated to him one exact inability he had, and it sounded like this: SPIT IT MAKES A REAL GOOD SHAPE.

Check all of these things out, and get back to us!
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

WEBCAMS AND GODDAMNS

We’ve got a show tomorrow (4/03/09) in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Anybody want to come to The Corner Bar in Kalamazoo, Michigan to see us play? It is with our GTG affliates Cavalcade, rockin’ rockers that they are.

Chris bought a webcam. Boy, it’s hard to get electronic trinkets that are Mac-Compatible, which is strange—we thought Macs were “In”.

Performing “It Was Barren and Then, It Died” on a tiny guitar:

It is fun, we think, to post video.
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

THE HUGGABLE BEAR WE MET ON THE T.V. MEMORIAL ARCHIVE

We are about to cry.
Like Men, Of Course.

All three of us, over some nice brandy by the fire.

Wearing smoking jackets with only the bottom button still buttoned, reminiscing about the benzine we injected in the second world war and the socks our grandmothers knitted for us in the colder months; mostly we reminisce about the times that we had fun, and the Huggable Bears we met on the T.V. who took all of our money that one great day we had with them.

OR we could just be referring to a song written by Chris for a project titled “A Paschal Circus”, back when that band contained members of IVAN and HORACE PICKETT, and it was a million members strong and we wore full-body corsets on the stage to cram every one in, and then we couldn’t move our arms to play so instead we just laughed and laughed and then everyone quit, although I fired my dad for good measure.

Before everyone quit, we had recorded almost enough for a record that was to be our debut album, but it got shelved after Chris got told to “stuff it” by almost everyone Chris knows. The record was never named, but the songs were—-

This one was called “HUGGABLE BEARS”.

It is fun to listen to and you should, and the link above will let you. It is more Faith No More than I remembered, although the resemblance is still small. Also we beat Kanye West to his whole “pitchshiftin’ voices” thing by a solid 4 years. Plus Chris sings the word “Baby” more than he ever has in a song, and ever will again.

We weren’t always the civilized gentlemen you meet at dinner parties now-a-days; we were once used to a wholly different type of alcohol (moonshine, we suspect) consumed around a wholly different type of fire (the camping kind). We have evidence (That’s Chris on the right):

I can’t remember what we were worshipping, it all seemed to blend together–If it was a Saturday, I suspect

PARIS 1919 AND HOW LITTLE WE LIKE “FINAL FANTASY”

Well, we actually love “Final Fantasy” the popular RPG video game series by SquareSoft. Oh, Cloud! Oh, Celes!

BUT we just saw something by the musical artist Owen Pallett, who calls his project “Final Fantasy” also (hey man, quit being such a Nobuo Uematsu fanboy and go get a job). Owen does a live cover of one of our favorite songs, “Paris 1919″ by John Cale.

It was/is so bad that it made us spit up our cornflakes, and made us feel like throwing down the gauntlet and just getting mad at this guy. We’ve never heard anything else he’s done, but we’re not sure we want to:

It’s O.K. if you liked that. But we have no idea why you would.

SO, We are issuing our formal response to this wussy tragedy:

OUR VERSION OF PARIS 1919 BY JOHN CALE.

Careful, Final Fantasy, the Kid Gloves are Now OFF.
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

WE LOVE LEVI JACOB BAILEY, IN ANY WAY HE WANTS.

We decided that we’ve been talking enough about ourselves. Jesus, how can we be so egotistical? This blog was not created just to talk about us, this blog was created to talk about stuff. Stuff, man, like things that are good, cool and O.K.

So, We Have Begun Our “Showcase Other Artists” Series, wherein we put up a few things about dudes that we think are O.K. around town and around the state and AROUND THE WORLD. We’re in that sort of mood.

This ShowCase is about Levi Jacob Bailey, a Dude that We Like. For full disclosure, Chris exists in a band with him: (CLEAR DAYS ALWAYS) and Chris’ involvement over the years has equaled .001% of it’s output. You never know what is happening with this project, it is a sidewinder, it is a chimera, it is a ghost AND it is a patriot.

This guy is an artist. From one of my favorite works, OAT CRACKS:

HAHA, THAT OAT CRACKS ME UP!

We came across a video of our boy playing his guitar that reminds us that he has got more John Darnielle (OF MOUNTAIN GOATS FAME) in him than we previously recalled:

Finally, (and with lots of fat, robber baronesque rubbing of the belly) one of our favorite songs off of a record that Levi and Chris Made Together, which specifically constitutes .0001 of the contributions made by Chris to the project:

THE SONG “NEON” OFF OF THE ALBUM “VHS” BY CLEAR DAYS ALWAYS.

This one was fun to play and sing on, believe you me. It still reminds me of the time that Levi and I almost made it big, I mean we played with DANIEL JOHNSTON for god’s sake. That was aaaalllllllrrriiiighhhhhttttt. t.

So, Remember That Levi Jacob Bailey Is The Best Around.

More highlights to come.

LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

LATCHKEY, BABY AND THE WAY WE LIKE EACH OTHER

So, today we were thinking about our past. Although we have little enough to show for it, this band has been in existence for nine years, which is a long time—and although it sometimes feels like we are only getting started (I haven’t lost enough hair yet to throw in the towel, our keyboard player still has all his teeth, our drummer recently cleared up all the errors made by the AARP), I think that it never hurts to feel nostalgic, especially in a way that doesn’t leave you in tears or horribly embarrassed.

So, first a picture that reminds me that through thick and thin, our band has triumphed in obscurity through the use of one single emotional bit of output: We Like Each Other. OH, yes, We Do. Sorry, girlfriends:

I just don’t know what happened; it was like a fit of passion during our press photography set, and although this particular photograph is never before seen (at least, we think so), we hope that it serves to demonstrate our dedication to each other, physically and emotionally. Atsa My Band!

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In other nostalgic news, I’ve recently come across a recording made during my studio-musician days (you know, the times when all you’ve got to record with you is whoever’s around, you get those too don’t you?), and uncovered a diamond in the rough that will NEVER, ever be polished and cut.

However, it is fun; my father plays drums (he’s quite good, although he gets a little buried) and the guitarist on this track is Luke Galas, currently of the Grand Rapids based band ADAMORE (he’s the goofy guy on the left if you visit the page) and he told me after finishing this song that in his personal opinion, I shall never write a better one.

Here’s to hoping that’s not true: LATCHKEY, BABY!

The song is, well, many things. ONE it was written in order to satisfy a requirement imposed upon me by my instructors in school, to have “X” number of instruments in it (something ridiculous, like twenty (see if you can find them all!)) TWO it is more metal-y than I’d like although it is stomachable, THREE it is an example of my affinity for many currently unpopular forms of music, being itself down-trodden, grungish and adolescently dark. But, come on: You Can’t Deny What You Liked As A Child, Can You?

LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

THE WEIRD SISTERS FAMILY ALBUM

So We Were Looking Through some old pictures of us, you know from back when we were kids. I had already learned all I needed to know about playing guitar and making my fans show their undergarments, all I needed back then was a hairstylist and a manager.

Now I AM a hairstylist and a manager, and I can’t even see my OWN undergarments. Go Figure. That’s our drummer Adrian entering the room via the door on the right:

A Fat Child, yes; but stupid.

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Does anybody like the musical group SparkleHorse Anymore? I know We Do! I happened to be chucking around on the ‘net yesterday listening to my tunes, and I started thinking about one song in particular that I quite like by them. So, I learned how to play it and recorded it on my eMac’s internal microphone nice and quick like.

They were a grower for me and Joe, our keyboard player. I remember back in maybe 2000-01 or so, I picked up this album at a used cd shop in Grand Haven. We were driving around listening to the records after, and Jordan was there, and I think he was the only one who liked it at the time, although later we all realized our mistake.

If you’d like to listen to it (and you should, it’s o.k.), here it is:
The Song “Weird Sisters” off of Sparklehorse’s debut, “Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot”

That’s it for today. Isn’t this excellent content? So much media.

LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS