monkeyplus1

These late-wednesday night shows KILL ME, but it’s the only time I run across some of my friends.

Malburro surprised us with some incredible theremin skills.

Fortunate that I work from home, I didn’t much mind waking up looking so haggard. I’d had a lot of water before bed, to offset drinking on an empty stomach, but that had me waking up several times during the night, and then finally waking up before 6am STARVING. Lesson learned. (yeah, right)

It would seem “12 Parties” was fairly well received. I never know.

There are some people who I give my music to, and coincidentally or not, I never hear from them again. I tend to assume the worst, but on the other hand, I make music for numero-uno: me.

I ran across a guy that has played many of the same venues I played live-music at, ten years ago when I was playing a live show once every two months. I know him by “David Lillegaard”, but he’s gone by a couple different names, and more band-names than I can remember. He was Axiomatic for a while, and now Downcast[e].

While not often booked on the same night, we played many of the same “forums” that were either weekly or monthly, for a period of several years.

Hypnotica, Aural Fixation, Frequency, gawdknows what else.

He was in a band called A Nat Hema, a crazy performance-art outfit that always was a ton of fun to watch (and sometimes scary!), with James Boring (who did the booking for Hypnotica and Aural Fixation, now a LA denizen), Timothy Scarrot and the illustriously bizarre Jennifer Robin.

Jennifer has spent the last few years doing a weekly radio show on KBOO called “Night of the Living Tongue” that showcases spoken-word. She’s also a published author, having written a book called Bouzi (available on amazon).

I haven’t talked to her in years, but I collaborated on a spoken word project with her many years ago titled “Colloidal Gold” that was some really strange story she wrote and narrated. I don’t know if she ever got it published. One word: surreal.

Back when I worked for the city government, one day she came to my work to pick up some CDs. She was on her way to a photo shoot, and walked right by the security guards with a machine gun. A toy one, but still.

I don’t think there was ONE guy (and maybe some girls) in the Portland electronic music scene that didn’t have a crush on Jennifer Robin at one time or another. Yow! I’ll have to make a point to stay up late some Thursday to catch her show.

I play quite a bit of video games, and keep a close eye on the industry in general.

Last fall, I bought Nintendo (NTDOY) at $15/share, and sold after x-mas when it was at $30. Not bad, right? Though, if I’d held out, it’s trading today at $57!! I guess I wasn’t so impressed with the lineup of Wii games, I hadn’t expected it to keep going up. Oh well.

I’m a huge Grand Theft Auto fan, created by Rockstar Games, who is in turn, owned by Take-Two Interactive (TTWO). Take-Two has been the subject of some notoriety.

Yeah, GTA and other ttwo games like “Bully” and “Manhunt 2″ really piss off some people, but the company has also had some woes at their executive level. An investigation by the SEC into back-dating of options, turnover, etc. That’s also done some damage.

“Grand Theft Auto IV”, which I’ve blogged about before (DROOL), was scheduled to come out in October. TTWO was cruising along around $20/share.

Out of nowwhere, Rockstar say the game is delayed until 2008. They announced this on a Friday. By the following Tuesday, their shares had dropped to $13/share.

This is a HUGE freaking company, worth a half-BILLION dollars. That’s a major hit.

But then, I’m thinking - opportunity knocks. I bought at $13. I know that as GTA IV approaches, that stock is going right back up.

Since then, “Bioshock” (by 2k games, also owned by Take Two) which might be a shoo-in for 2007 Game of The Year, boosted the stock. The ratings board has now given “Manhunt 2″ a M-rating, so it is now being readied for an October releasse. That’s a plus.

Right now, it’s at $15, but if it dips down again, I’m only going to buy more. It’s LONG, meaning I won’t cash-in on it until next year, but big baby jesus I know the FIENDS out there that love GTA as much as I do are only going make this a sure-thing.

They can’t fuck it up now, can they??? we’ll see…

http://www.virb.com/monkeyplus1, they have a cool player for some of the MP3s I uploaded.  very nice and simple interfact, no dumb crap or flashing ads.

yeah, I actually have a mice pace account, too, but myspatch just makes me feel so … I don’t know.  My sisters all have myspace pages, so I’ll just - zzt!

so, if you didn’t already see it on the monkeyplus1.com page:

the album I just finished is available for download: monkeyplus1: 12 parties

yup. that’s right.

years have gone by. “Low Cool” was probably the last official “album”, though there was one after that I had available for download that had some cool stuff. But that never made it all the way through to being finished - no album artwork, cd-r copies, just a set of mostly short tracks.

I have a friend, if I can call him that (I like him, but not so sure he likes me!) who snobbishly looks down his nose at people who “sample”, and on his website proudly proclaims he doesn’t use ANY samples. Which is not true, some of his keyboards have sample-based sounds, but he doesn’t sample other artists.

That kind of absolutism seemed kind of dumb to me, and in a way, a backhanded insult to me. Maybe not really, I know what he REALLY means, but still…

So, I made “Low Cool” with nothing BUT samples from the radio. A kick drum here, a snare there, and nothing more than a phrase here and there. All of it off the radio. It’s completely original, and though the sounds used to make the album are 100% stolen, the work is not derivative in any way of the source material.

After “Low Cool”, I went the other way, and tried my hand at making music without ANY kind of sampling, just using virtual instruments and old-school sequencer-based composition. I shared some of those tracks with the public, friends and people on em411.com, but I shelved that project for a few years. I’ve come back to it, with a vengeance!

In the last three weeks, I’ve cooked up 34 tracks for a new monkeyplus1 album. It all came out like a firehose. I had told my friend Chris “Sclr” that I would put some tracks together for a live show he runs, but none of what came out was abrasive enough to fit into that scene.

I’ll narrow that down to about 8 or so of the best, do a few more mixdowns, some editing, and KABOOM! A fresh new monkeyplus1 album SOARING to the top of the charts!!!