Little Things (That Tear Us Apart)

Back in May, at a show I was playing in Gotheburg, I met a swell guy who called himself Bobby. I'd venture that not many Swedes share this name. Wait, neither does he; it's a stage name and fits perfectly with the sunny beachbum pop that his band Irene effortlessly plays. Bobby knows my booking agent Rickard who was along for the ride. So, I was introduced and over a meal of stir fry and knäckebröd I got to know Bobby. Bobby complimented me on one of my songs that he'd heard on Myspace and then pulled out of his pocket a cdr he had burned to listen to at a pre-show party which he never made it to. On that cd was my song that he was digging along with other recent Myspace finds he'd accumulated. I ended up with that cd in my pocket because he was so excited about all of these songs that we figured I'd better hear them for myself. By the end of the night we'd consumed enough beer and discussed music to such an extent that it was determined that I'd be receiving raw tracks from Irene's next single so I could have a go at a remix.

If you listen to an Irene song and one of my songs I don't think you'd draw too many parallels besides the fact that we both understand the idea of an intro, a verse and a chorus. They are an 8-piece group with horns, organs, boys, girls and a good deal of life-under-the-sun lyrical content. But that's the point. A collaboration in the form of a remix would most likely bring something new to their song. Safe to say, it did.

When I talked to Bobby on the phone shortly after he'd heard my completed mix I thought it would be shelved indefinitely. He used terms like "not what I expected" and "daring" and "you really rearranged absolutely everything!" As the next couple of weeks passed the remix grew on Bobby and I was really excited to hear that they'd be including it on their upcoming EP. So, here it is, released today, my first publicly-available remix. Thanks to Bobby and the rest of Irene for including me in the fun and giving me the chance to get involved in the remix world. I have plenty of plans bouncing around my head to do more collaborations of the sort.


Little Things (That Tear Us Apart) EP
Track 3 is mine: Little Things (Mike Downey Remix)

You can get it from Labrador's web shop.

Don't fucking blow up on me now man

I flipped over my iBook for the first time ever and was impressed that the battery is equiped with a button and fancy LED lights that stream upwards to show the amount of charge. I checked its serial number, doubled-checked Apple's site and concluded that my battery is not a candidate to explode. Is yours?

Thirteen and a half games back

Regardless of the standings, the constant let downs, the injuries, the bad managing and/or playing and the feeling of being shafted again and again by the owners, I'll always be a Cubs fan. Plans are locked down and I will be gracing the Friendly Confines next month. I couldn't be happier about this, honestly.

Cubs in Five (Eric Metronome covering The Mountain Goats) - mp3

Opening

One of my long-time friends, Pawl Simmons, has been making special and interesting art, from what I'm guessing, his whole life. He finally has his own little corner of the internet to properly show it off. So, I'd like to direct your attention to:
paulwaltersimmons.com

I haven't heard of them. Were they on Slabco?

Everyone, listen. There is too much music in the world. There's no quality control. I can't stand to read another review or hear someone mention another new band that I should go check out. I don't want to because I'm busy listening to the mpfrees from the Slabco discography. Don't think that I'm trying to turn you onto Slabco. I mean, a lot of these albums came out on cassette tapes with cheap covers and who wants that anyways. Can you even dance to this stuff?

In Athens, GA I stood around and probably looked bored while Sukpatch (they're on Slabco) played at the 40 Watt Club. They kept telling the soundguy to "turn the motherfucker up." I mean, who wants any motherfucker to be turned up all the way? Wouldn't sound quality suffer? It took a little bit of time for what I saw to sink in. Like people all over the world do every second of the day, I changed my mind. I decided that standing on a stage and yelling at the soundman to "turn the motherfucker up" was a good idea. And then I bought a Sukpatch album entitled Haulin' Grass and Smokin' Ass, which is on Slabco. Years later when I was completely broke and selling off cds, I held onto Haulin' Grass and Smokin' Ass [slabco-36]. And then when I was still broke but decided to go buy some records anyways, it made sense to buy the vinyl of Tie Down That Shiny Wave. That's an EP by Sukpatch but it's not on Slabco. I mean, don't go search around the internet or anything for this stuff just because I decided to drop the name of a band that you may have not heard of. You wouldn't even have to search that hard though, seeing as how Slabco is giving the thing away on their website. That's totally nice of Slabco. These Sukpatch guys started putting out albums in the mid '90s, or maybe even earlier but what do I know; I don't have time to go hunting around the internet for pointless information about some band, on Slabco.

Good people come through

It's been a relatively slow summer for myself here in Uppsala. Don't get me wrong, a slow summer is a good thing. This is one of the warmest Swedish summers in recent memory from what I'm gathering. And by warm I mean somewhere in the 70s on an average. No complaints here.

It's been productive. Safe to say I'm sitting on a batch of songs that could easily be deemed an album. They could be split up into a couple EPs as well. I'm not too sure what to do with this group of songs at the moment. I'm not rushing anything as far as official releases go but I've been itching to put up a song from the new batch either here or on myspace to as least stream and let everyone hear. I don't really like putting unmastered stuff up for download just because, in theory, until mastered the song isn't actually finished. Anyways, I'm thinking that before my return to Chicago I will reveal something as a little preview.


What else? Stockholm continues to blow my mind. It's just the most beautiful city, especially during the summer. Monday night m'sweet and I joined some friends for a little grill party overlooking the water from some pretty, but not so easy to walk across while carrying a cooler and bag of food, cliffs. Hey American friends, have you tried grilling halloumi cheese? I'd never heard of it before I came here. Its texture holds up nicely on the grill and tastes amazing. Bring some to your next bbq; impress your friends.

And lastly but by no means leastly, my new pals, by way of London and now living in Uppsala, Raffa and Erika are back in town and I couldn't be happier. Last night we conglomerated into what was most likely the first time three fixed-gear bikes have ridden through Uppsala. I doubt we're setting any trends, but definitely turned some heads. Great night. And have a great day.

Turning Pro

Today I treated myself to a Flickr Pro account. I knew I wanted one for the past 6 months but had been putting it off until I used up all of the space they give you with a free account. So, to put it to use I went ahead and uploaded a pretty big batch of live photos of myself, mostly from this year and last but I did find some oldies from a solo tour I did in 2002 as The National Splits. Click on this thing to check it all out. If you have a Flickr account please add me as a contact!

Neon sugar golden supper snack

When I was a kid part of the fun of getting let loose at the mall was making the obligatory stop at Buy the Weigh, a store that operated sort of like the candy shop Charlie frequented before winning his Golden Ticket. There were aisles and aisles of random treats. You'd stuff your bag full, weigh it, and pay based on how much you took. This was a once a month, at most, sort of thing for us. Most commonly it was a Snickers or something of the sort as these candy stores were rare and seemed ancient and outdated somehow even back in the '80s and '90s.

Fast forward to my life here, today, now. Walk into any gas station, convenience store, tobacco shop or grocery store and you'll come face to face with...


candy, lots of it. Pick up an empty bag and a scooper and walk down candy row. You've got a selection of everything from namebrand individually-wrapped pieces to various sizes of brown "cola-tasting" bottle-shaped pieces. . I'm guessing my tongue is blue right now from that handful of neon sour things I consumed before typing this. Yes, earlier I made a candy run and that sparked this blog. Where's my toothbrush.

Based on a little research that m'sweet just did, Swedes buy the most candy out of any country in the European Union. I wasn't surprised by that factiod. I'm more of an ice cream sort of character than a bag of candy type. But maybe my taste buds are changing (conforming) just a little. Last night I nearly made a solo candy run but stopped myself and went for a beer from the fridge instead (vices!). But today there was no turning back. M'sweet mentioned that she could go for some lösgodis, and that was all I needed to jaunt across the street and make the purchase. Was I like a kid in a candy store? No, I was like a kid in a regular old grocery store.