April 13, 2022
The Lizard King rounded up all the players of the hockey team and made them lick a piece of coal. That’s how they summoned good luck.
Then they got inspired by last months magazines about home decor. They studied the papers super intensely.
“This one is all about how to kill the other team.” Declared one of the hockey players.
“That’s good to know. Now how about getting to fucking heaven? How do we achieve that? That’s why we’re here!” Screamed the Lizard King.
“Oh- right. I forgot about that.” Mumbled the hockey player as he want back to rubbing his knee caps and reading the magazine.
The Lizard King got on top of a bottle of Coke and hailed his fellow friends.
“Listen up! All of you losers need to get one thing into your bald heads! That’s this- all the time is now! You’re here and it’s all for you to feel! The future will never come and the past never happened! The present moment is all there is!”
The hockey players got confused and agreed to eat the Lizard King. They’d heard enough verbal acrobats from this Lizard. They took that reptile and picked him apart, limb by limb. The Lizard King cursed them all to hell as he was eaten alive.
“You’ll pay for your sins! You’ll be locked up under the ice-rink along with Jack and his crooks!
The hockey players got really sweaty and laughed like kids who love to eat at McDonalds. Then they laughed for seven months until their bodies were skinny. They had to give up being sports-men. They opened up a flower shop and sold flowers and plants to local farmers. That’s all they knew to do.
The world order was changing anyways. China was becoming ever more present on the world stage and all the boats in the ocean were being powered by things like blood. Not literally, but figuratively.
Last night I went to Kensington Market. I did two gigs. I did one at Free Times Cafe and then another at Handlebar. I’ve done 3 solo performances know. I’m excited for the next one because that will be the fourth show and it’s usually around the fourth time that I get comfortable doing something new.
It’s really interesting how performing live really reveals what parts of the music are and aren’t working. It’s not necessarily based on the reaction of the audience, since at these places they’re pretty supportive no matter what so it’s hard to know what they actually like. It’s more just a feeling I get while I’m performing. The last bit of my set was way to ‘chordy’. I already knew it was hard to memorize, but once I was up there I really realized how over complicated it might be. I decided to drop it this morning. The song was ‘Loving Bri’ which went into this little key change song thing, which went into another thing, which went into a MegaBus reprise. I like each of those songs on their own, but it was too much happening all at once. So I’m dropping all of that and going with ‘On My Own’ right out of ‘Isolation’.
I was listening to a podcast with Rick Rubin and he was taking about how when he works with artists they’ll work on like 20 songs, and then once they’re done they’ll pick their top 5 and get rid of the rest. It’s painful to have to remove songs even if you like them but It’s important. So that’s what I feel like I’m doing.
It’s also fun to just keep revising the set, that way it’s a little different each time for people in the audience who’ve already seen me, and hopefully it gets a little stronger with each iteration. The thing that I forgot when I’m practising in my room, is that at these gigs there’s a lot of people in the room who are just talking, so it feels a little silly playing these songs that have tons of chords. For these kinds of gigs I want to have songs that feel very direct and simple. Not necessarily simple in the chords or melody, but simple in that you don’t need to really ‘try’ to hear what I’m trying to get at. It’s just there and you can feel it.