My Apologies To Any Grizzly Bears I May Have Offended

A gang of wild grizzly bears near the border of Alberta contacted me shortly after I published my last post. In the post, I hinted that playing for an audience of Canadian grizzly bears might make me uncomfortable and that I'm leaning towards staying in the states. The particular gang of wild grizzly bears that contacted me was greatly dismayed by this post. Several of them sent me emails with the following jpeg attached:


So maybe I was wrong about grizzly bears. And I won't rule out Canada just yet.

There. Are you happy, grizzly bears?

Thursday Ramblings

Sick Lauren. So hawt right now.


Tis a glorious sick day. I haven't bothered to get out of my pajamas yet. I'd like to think I'm getting better though. After all, I ate a piece of toast and lived to tell about it.

I've made the most of my time by doing a little homework and watching all of the videos in the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" collection. I also sent an email to a band we might open for on the east coast. I asked for recommendations of venues to play over on that side of the world. I signed my name under the words "Peace, Love, and Disco" and sent it into cyberspace.

Then some guy I went to high school with IMed me out of the blue to tell me he likes my music. I chatted with him for a little bit and found out he's playing in a ska band now. He's also planning a tour this summer and told me that booking shows in New Mexico and Texas is rough. I had heard from a couple of different sources that the music scene in Texas was not great but this confirmed it. There are only two sticky notes in Texas on my map. One represents friends of a friend and the other says "STRANGER DANGER" with the name of someone I met on the Interwebs ("put me on the map but i am stranger danger!" he wrote...oh how I love having friends that live in my computer screen...). So we can probably skip Texas.

I think we're headed more towards Oklahoma anyway. We may have to go through a little bit of Texas to get there. Depends on which way we go. There's probably not much of a music scene in Oklahoma either. But my good friend Nancy lives there and she informed us that we are coming to Oklahoma even if we have to do a show in her living room. Sounds like a good time to me. Nancy's sticky on the map gets a star by it.

Ryan and I really just need to sit down with a map and hammer out a route. We also need to do a lot of research about where the good music scenes are. We keep saying Portland to Portland, but there's a lot of different ways we can go.

There's also the option of coming back through Canada. It sounds sexy in theory, but the more I think about it, the more I ask myself this question: What the hell is in Canada?

I'm trying to think of an answer to that question that doesn't involve the phrase "lots of grizzly bears."

Though Original Sound Trash is all about being unique and reaching out to new audiences, I don't know how I feel about playing for grizzly bears.

Who knows though. There's gotta be something cool in Canada. Commence Internet research. Yah!

Dude. I should take another nap or something.

Have a glorious Thursday, friends!

Peace, Love, and Disco,
Me!

Still Not Feeling Like a Rock Star...

Disclaimer: There's a Kimya Dawson lyric that says something like, "If you don't like body functions, don't read my blog." That lyric could be applied to this post. You have been warned.
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Tonight was special.

To make a long story short, I can now cross "throw up twice during a presentation" off of my list of things to do in life.

Fortunately, I was able to make an awkward exit and run to the bathroom while another girl in my group was talking. I hurled into a trashcan in the safety of the ladies' room, a disgusted Chinese exchange student being the only witness. I ran my hands under cold water and made it back to the classroom in time to finish the presentation. I told no one why I had left and proceeded to act like everything was normal. It was still a very mortifying experience though. There's nothing like standing in front of a group of people and realizing that it would be a good idea to visually locating all available trashcans in the room. It was like my sixth grade winter band concert all over again. *shudder*

Weirdly enough, the prof seemed to like the presentation. He was especially impressed by the video I made, which was funny because I cut it together last night when I was grumpy and had a fever. Apparently the video distracted him from the fact that I was turning green and visually locating all the trashcans in the room.

I can't wait until school is over and done with.

Now that I've got this rock tour plan cooked up, I really can't wait to graduate and be done with this whole college thing.

The map looks at me every day from it's perch on my wall. It's calling my name. It's saying, "Lauren! Lauren! I am the United States! Make rock music in meeee!"

Actually, I've never heard it say those exact words (or any words at all, really). But you get the point.

Anyway, now that I've thrown up a couple of times, I am officially sick and can spend my evening irresponsibly blogging and looking at keytars on ebay. Okay, so maybe I was doing that before I threw up, but now I can do it free of guilt.

Dear Keytar,

The more I think about you, the more I want you. You are cooler than an accordion but still have a lot of personality. You are probably not as heavy as my accordion and I don't have to squeeze you to get you to make noise. Like I said in an earlier post, I wish it was at least semi-practical to throw money into you. Maybe you can be mine someday.

Love,
Lauren

Gah. I am writing letters to inanimate objects. I should go to bed.

Goodnight, oh universe.

<3

Inspiration

Bleck. Not feeling like a rock star today. Am all congested and crampy and headache-tastic. No amount of Tylenol or cold medicine is making me feel like leaving my room. But I have to soon. I have to give a presentation tonight. It's a group presentation on a topic I have no interest in for a class that's required for graduation (this just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?). And tomorrow morning, I have an important meeting that I need to be not-sick for. I always get sick at the worst times.

I was in a pretty terrible mood last night. I left work early, got in my sweatpants, and devoted the evening to editing a boring video for the presentation I have to give tonight. I texted Steve but he was busy. I looked at the food in my cupboard and decided I didn't want to cook. I munched on a soda cracker. I refreshed my facebook page and discovered that one of my favourite artists, Amanda Palmer, has finally been dropped from her record label! She's been caught in a legal battle with them for a long time and finally won. To celebrate, she gave all of her fans a free song. The song was about doing whatever you want regardless of what people think, and it made me grin.

The download even came with a bundle of pictures of her and her friends recording it.

I'm going to sound like such a fan girl, but I officially love Amanda Palmer.

I could have gone to bed happy after the free song. But then I discovered that Amanda and friends were doing a live webcast to toast her freedom. So poured myself another glass of juice, got under my favourite blanket, and tuned in on UStream to watch Amanda Palmer, Sxip Shirley, and Jason Webley drinking wine and playing music on the other side of the country. They had to be quiet because they were at Amanda's parents' house in the suburbs, so they snuck outside and played "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in the woods. It was like The Blair Witch Project with a strange punk cabaret twist and it totally made my night.

This is why I love music. This is also why I love the Internet. But mostly, I just love music.

Artists like Amanda Palmer remind me why I love music so much. Her music is honest, witty, and generally just rocks. She's coming to town in May for her Evelyn Evelyn tour. Trash rock tour madness doesn't start till June, so I'll be able to go!

Not that I need to be spending money on shows right now, espeically after last weekend. But...it's Amanda Palmer!

And last weekend was Muse! Totally different creature than Amanda Palmer, but absolutely brilliant.

Actually, it may have just been the best concert I've ever been to.

Yes, better than the time my rock concert virginity was taken away by They Might Be Giants. Better than being pressed up against the stage at The Kooks or being punched in the arm at Apocalyptica. Possibly even better than being caught under a mushroom cloud of marijuana smoke with my mom at The Wailers last summer.

Those were all fantastic but this...this was MUSE.

This picture was taken with Steve's iphone. No zooming involved - we really were that close!

This is the expression I wore during most of the show:

I kinda look like I just peed my pants with excitement or something. I swear I didn't. But Muse blew my mind a little bit.

I left the show fantasizing about playing stadiums and doing big budget shows involving lights, fog, lasers, and moving platforms. I also spent too much time looking at keytars on ebay. I've always secretly thought they were cool, but when Matt Bellamy whipped one out during "Undisclosed Desires," it made me really want one.

Matt Bellamy, why do you have the ability to make everything you touch turn into sexiness?

I wish there was a universe in which it was at least semi-practical for me to buy a keytar at this point in my life...

Blinding You With SCIENCE!

I have physics lab in a little bit. I have absolutely no desire to go but I need to pass physics. It's an easy gen ed class, but I'm having the hardest time caring. All I really want to do right now is be a rock star. And last time I checked, rock stars don't take physics.

Not sure if rock stars run around in goggles making soap in their front yards either, which is what Ryan and I did over spring break. I really wasn't kidding when I mentioned Original Sound Trash-themed soap in that video a couple of posts back. Hey, every band needs their trademark.

I think we were high off of the fumes at this point. Don't play with lye, kiddos. It's nasty stuff.

Our first batch of soap is still curing on my windowsill. It was an experimental batch. We even tried scenting it with some tea we don't like. If it turns out okay, we may have Amish Housewife Day Part Two and mass produce OST soap to sell at shows alongside shirts and buttons.

Hi, we're eccentric. :D

Our Drummer Has No Soul But It's Still Rock And Roll!

It's been approximately one week since Ryan and I gave birth to this crazy idea of taking our music on the road. And though it's only been one week, we already have several options of places we can stay throughout the trip as well as the possibility of a show on the east coast. Everyone I've talked to in the past week has been extremely supportive of this whole rock tour idea, which blows my mind a little bit. Steve keeps telling me that it only makes sense for me to go on a cross country rock tour and that the fact everyone is being so supportive just proves that this is meant to happen. I hope he's right.

In other news, my band mate is apparently Bob the freaking Builder. Last week he was talking about making a drum machine for our shows this summer. I had no idea that meant he would be updating his blog with pictures of the finished product on Monday. You can check it out here.

Who needs a real person when you have a drum machine? :D

(Related question: Why do I need one mariachi when I can have a whole band? :) The first person who can name what movie that's from gets a gold star.)

Maps, Street Teams, Yentas, etc.

Last night, I removed the giant "School House Rock" poster from my wall and put up a map in the United States in it's place. I then spent a significant amount of time decorating it with colorful stickies. Each sticky is labeled with the name of someone we know (or kinda know) that lives somewhere in the United States.

So the middle of the country is lacking stickies, but we'll fix that with couchsurfing.com.

(And for the record, not all of the stickies are totally legitimate. I did this late at night when writing "AMANDA PALMER" all over Boston made sense and slapping the name "Edward Cullen" on Forks, Washington was hysterical.)

As we get an idea of what venues we want to play, we'll add them to the map too.

In other news, Ryan came over tonight for some quality trash rock time. Any band can have practice, but only Original Sound Trash can have trash rock time! Trash rock time is generally a very magical part of the week. Tonight was no exception. We explored new music. We explored the contents of the infamous Trash Rock Box. We quoted obscure movies and internet memes. Ryan acted like my psychiatrist. I acted like Ryan's yenta. And then we made this video:



Watch it to learn how YOU can be a part of our street team!

If you are interested in promoting us in your town, let me know!

And if you are interested in dating Ryan, please notify me of this as well. After all, I am his yenta.

A Letter to the Universe

Dear Universe,

Stop trying to be so practical all the time.

Love,
Lauren

Coffee coffee coffee

Good morning world. It's a new day! And it's coffee time for Lauren.

Really, I have to have coffee first thing in the morning, every morning. If coffee is not introduced into my system upon waking, I will get a nasty headache that's impossible to shake. I've been thinking about how this will work on the road. Here are all the solutions I can think of to this dilemma:

- Plan to buy coffee somewhere every morning/cross my fingers that the people we stay with along the way will have coffee available in the morning

- Take my little coffee pot on the road. If we end up getting our hands on a sketchy creeper van, it can have it's own seat.

- Live off of instant coffee for two months (this thought makes me gag a little).

- Kick the coffee addiction entirely. This would be hell. But if I started once I moved back to my parents house, it wouldn't interfere with school, and I would be mostly recovered by the time we hit the road.

None of the options are really that attractive.

Is it bad that I'm leaning towards just taking my coffee pot with me?

Maybe we should just get a double decker bus and be The Partridge Family...

Today I woke up and realized that this whole thing is way too irresponsible. I am going to call Ryan right now and tell him I'm out. I'm going to get a job doing monotonous secretarial work and live in my parent's basement for awhile.

And yes, it's April Fools Day. That whole paragraph was a joke. Fooled you! (Though I doubt anyone believed a word of that).

Truth is, the more I think about this, the more I am totally set on doing it. It's getting harder and harder to concentrate on school with this exciting idea rolling around in my head.

There's still a lot we need to figure out. We don't even really know what vehicle we're taking yet. We've got a ton of equipment that will be going with us, which makes this part difficult. It's almost like we need a sketchy creeper van to ride around the country in. That way Ryan's gigantic Marshall amp can have it's own seat. Meanwhile, my keyboard could take up a whole row of seats and we'd still have room for our luggage, our cooler full of tuna fish sandwiches, and our dwarf-sized model of Stonehenge.

(Sorry, for some reason it's impossible not to make constant references to "This is Spinal Tap" when talking about a rock tour.)

I'm not really sure how we would come up with said sketchy creeper van though. So far, our transportation choices are as follows:

- My little blue truck. It's got a secure bed that could fit a ton of our stuff, but if three of us end up going, the cab will get cramped really fast. There's also the option of putting some sort of camper-type cover over the back so we could occasionally sleep back there. But again, if there's three of us, one person would have to draw the short straw and sleep in the cab, and no matter how you rolled the dice it would potentially be weird. Not to mention we'd probably all be sleeping on top of our equipment crap.

- My mother's SUV. She offered to let me borrow it for a couple of months. Probably guzzles gas, but might almost fit everything. Plus, nothing says rock and roll like a Honda CRV!

- Ryan's car. It's little and white (kinda like Ryan!). It gets good gas mileage and will blend in well when we drive through California. Not sure where all the equipment will fit. Especially the gigantic Marshall amp.

That thing is a beast! Just look at the picture - it's going to eat me!

*Sigh* We may need to downsize. Or go acoustic. Being electric is more fun though.

And if there's room in whatever vehicle we end up taking, I just might bring my accordion along.

I need to practice it a lot, but it's a cool addition to our sound that may make us a little more memorable. So the jury's still out on the accordion.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll come up with the right transportation method, it's just a matter of being creative. If you have any ideas, please share them with us! :)