what the frag i’ve been up to
belated new year’s resolution ..1: write in my journal, or “blog”, at least once a year, and not feel guilty if i don’t write any more than that.
see, i already feel better. i’ve just made my first new year’s resolution come true. and now if i actually blog say, once a month, i will be really rockin’ my resolution. i’ve been trying to hide it, but let’s just get this out in the open: i’m a terrible blogger. i mean so well but i’m inconsistent and have a tendency to procrastinate on such things. you don’t know how many times i’ve thought to myself “i should really write that in my blog, they’d get a kick out of that”, and then totally dropped the ball. so i’m asking you now to set the bar low for expectations on this journal so i can surprise you with how often i keep in touch. ok, nuff said.
i bet you’ve been wondering what the frag* i’ve been up to. (*see ..3) here’s the lowdown:
1) i’ve been recording some songs with my fave producer/engineer and longtime friend, Richard Oliver Furch. we did the session with the band at LA’s famous Village Recorder Studios. (www.villagestudios.com) Some legends as well as heroes of mine have recorded there including Aerosmith, Tori Amos, Fleetwood Mac, Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, Beck, Pat Benatar, Mariah Carey, The Eurhythmics, Foo Fighters, Aretha Franklin, Peter Gabriel, Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, Madonna, BB King just to name a small few.
the band was incredible, featuring Ben Butler on electric guitar (Jonatha Brooke, Dar Williams), Eric Holden on bass (The Bodeans, Josh Groban), and Bryan Keeling on drums (Shooter Jennings). we laid down all the basic tracks at The Village and are now doing overdubs at Richard’s studio, The Green Room. (see www.emixing.com) check out some photos from the sessions on the Gallery page of my website.
so when will these songs be available to you guys? i’m not sure just yet. don’t want to get too boring and businessy on you, but we will be shopping these songs to get a record deal and make me a superstar and all that jazz. there’s been some exciting stuff going on as far as this aspect of my career goes though nothing concrete to report. don’t want to count my chickens just yet but trust me, you’ll be the first to know when i do. and who knows, they might even end up on Myspace in the meantime…stay tuned!
2) on New Years Eve i became the proud mommy of 2 adorable little kittens! finally i have pets again. i grew up with 15 pets (horses, dogs, cats, rabbits etc) and i’ve really missed having furry friends. my roomie and i adopted them through a great organization in LA called Kitten Rescue (www.kittenrescue.org). since we got them on New Years Eve we named them Eve and Sly (short for Sylvester, which is what they call New Years Eve in Germany…those crazy Germans!). they’re 4 months old and are brother and sister but you’d swear they’re twins. they’re both jet black with yellow eyes so when they’re in a devilish mood they look pretty menacing.
at first Eve and Sly put a wrench in my rock star lifestyle by landing full force kamikaze-kitty style on my head at 6am! after waking me up they would proceed to torture me in various feline ways by attacking my toes under the sheets or gripping a lock of my hair tightly between their teeth and then running with it. now, i’m not a morning person by any stretch so you can imagine how happy this made me. but i can say now that both rockstar and kitties made it through the adjustment period and are getting along quite well. there are also photos of Sly and Eve on the Gallery page of my website.
3) to wind down after our late night sessions, my producer, the aforementioned Furch, has gotten me hooked on a show i woulda sworn up and down i’d never watch unless i was under attack by an angry mob of sci-fi fanantics (read: geeks). well, i was kinda under pressure from at least one sci-fi geek, and i say that quite fondly because i consider myself a geek, but of the general variety, not the sci-fi kind.
anyways, The Furch had downloaded all the episodes of the Sci-Fi channel’s Battlestar Galactica from Itunes and had been watching them on his laptop. (do you see a theme here? recording engineers are serious nerds and god help you if you get stuck at a dinner table with a bunch of them. you’re about to learn a lot about compressors and mic-pre’s and plug-ins and things you never knew existed. i’m kidding, i adore recording engineer nerds, just needed to vent a little)
to make a long story short, i’ve been converted to the dark side and am now a Battlestar Galactica fan. it’s actually a quite riveting story about how humans created these robots called Cylons who eventually turn against them and rebel and nuke most of the human race and there’s just this one Battlestar and fleet of humans left trying to fight the Cylons and find their way to the mythical 13th colony called Earth. the catch is that some of the Cylons are sleeper agents, they look just like humans, live amongst humans and even think they’re human until their mission gets activated. just trust me, it’s way cool. and there are even hot Cylon girls and six-pack baring military guys to keep your attention.
oh, and one of my fave parts of BG is that to get around FAA censorship, they say “frag” instead of the real F-word. that way they can cuss as much as they want. at first i about wet my pants when they said things like “you mother-fragger, you just say that cause you’re fragging her.” but now i’m saying it too. hey, at least you can get away with it in polite company.
so that’s what the frag i’ve been up to.
until next year,
kyler 