Journal - 2009

Getting Moving

About got damb time. It has been a rough year to be sure. Good things, not so good things, but changes all around. I can't believe how long it has been since I wrote anything on here. I've been busy. At least it felt like busy. And now it's the holidays again. I've ordered my pretentious, left wing, free-range turkey and have stocked up on charcoal. Come to think of it, I'm hungry now.

And so is my dog. Now that it gets dark earlier she seems to think that dinnertime comes at 4pm. I never did like Standard Time. She doesn't care, she just wants to be fed.

My new record is out and available. Please support independent music and pick up a copy. Did I mention that music makes a fantastic holiday gift? It's the gift that keeps on giving. I remember getting vinyl albums - back when they were just called albums and you didn't have to say what they were made of - and tapes and such for Christmas over the years. For some reason I have a vivid image of washing dishes at my first job while jamming Boston's Third Stage on my cassette walkman. Brad Delp was crooning "Babe, tomorrow's so far away, there's just something that I had to say" in my ears as I was rinsing pureed peas down the drain. For some reason, I also remember listening to Sting's Dream Of the Blue Turtles under my grandparent's dining room table. Teenages will go anywhere to find privacy from adults and annoying younger siblings and cousins. One Reagan-era Christmas I'd acquired this crazy looking silver foil tree and figred that blue lights would best complete the proper level of kitsch and camp. As I lay in my bunk bed bathed in pale blue light, The Honeydripper's Sea of Love drowned out the sound of the heat vent in my room. Memory is a funny thing. Happy almost-Thanksgiving. 11.18.09



Independent's Day

The new record is out. Available to purchase through my website, CD Baby or iTunes. Lots of folks have already picked it up but I would love it if you did, too. It's really good... or so people have been telling me. There will likely be a long overdue site overhaul soon. I've been busting my ass for so long on this project that I needed a little breather. The last 6 months have been crazy in my life. Changes abound. But I feel better and can now attack this thing with a clearer head.

I don't know where to begin.

I got one of those digital TV converter boxes. It sucks. I was really excited about the changeover after seeing my friend Tyler's impressive selection of channels. Well, I've learned that digital TV isn't all it's cracked up to be. I might get one or two usable channels. All in all this doesn't bother me. Whether the channels come in or not I'm just not that interested in what's on them.

I had a CD Release Party at The Blue Palms in Hollywood on June 6th. It went great. I served some IPA that I'd made to the attendees and we were able to pull off a rocking show.

I managed to sneak up to Yosemite for a couple days in May. I'll be sure to post some pictures.

Now that things are settling down in my world I'll do my best to update this thing more often. Things were sort of out of control for a while but I've managed to get a handle on it. All is well. And in some ways, it couldn't be better.

If I don't manage to check in, I hope everyone has a happy, inebriated and safe Independence Day. Kaboom! 7.1.09


Wisdom From a Crazy Person

Love is forgiving another person for being human. 5.21.09

Silverface Champs

There will be a new album soon. It will have great songs within its digital grooves. I sincerely hope that you buy one, or maybe more than one. It will make a great gift - and Christmas is right around the corner.



High Drama

Being in a band is like being married to 5 people. Except you all live in different houses and you have your own cars. At least most of you do. People come and go in bands and that's truly a shame. I've played with some wonderful people and great musicians over the years, and they pretty much all come and go. As a band leader and songwriter I am insanely jealous of Tom Petty. He's shared his stage with Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench since I was being potty trained. What he has is exceedingly rare and that makes it all that much more special.

I've never been one to think that a band should keep the same name when members come and go. Eventually you wind up with some aberration like Credence Clearwater Revisited - a state fair circuit cash cow without much of a stake in the original at all. I stayed up all night to get tickets to see Pink Floyd without Roger Waters when I was in high school. I was elated at the time, but looking back I feel as if I ended up seeing something that was akin to Pink Floyd. The music was great, sure, but I now know that it wasn't the real thing.

Changes are coming, and I intend to roll with them. There will be a new album soon. Of that much I can be sure. I've kicked around a few titles, and I'll have to decide on one in the next few days when the artwork gets wrapped up. I'll be sure to let everybody know when and how to get a copy. I hope you like it. I've tried very hard to make it the best album it can be. It reflects a lot of things that have happened in my life since the last record... and I am dumbfounded that it took this long to see the light of day. There were many legitimate diversions... and a few wasted wild goose chases. But there will be new music soon. Mark my words.



Crackbook

I have been spending entirely too much time dicking around on Facebook. I signed up on a lark, thinking "Oh, boy - just another something or other to keep up with on the Intenet," but it has turned out to be fun. Just like everybody else in America, I have reconnected with old friends and viewed a lot of embarassing photographs from high school and sometimes beyond. What I don't like is that there is now a whole new place to check e-mail. As if I don't already have enough e-mail addresses. And then there's MySpace. MySpace was sort of fun until it became innundated with dopey lists and Have-You-Ever forwards. Which is how Facebook has become lately. I started to shun MySpace for that very reason and now Facebook is becoming another hangout for 15 year olds. God help us all. Maybe I'll actually get something accomplished.

For what it's worth, my Facebook profile can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Armstrong/1430145120

And my MySpace profile is here:

http://www.myspace.com/joearmstrong

2.16.09



How Dry I Am

My mother sent me this article below sometime last year. Let's just say it's from a newspaper in a part of America that has a profusion of "dry" counties. To the uninitiated - a dry county is a county in which the sale of alcohol is prohibited. I'll give you a second to let that sink in and for you to pick up your jaw. During my travels and travails I have attempted to explain this concept to many people around the world and a good percentage of said people are incredulous at the notion. The person who wrote this letter to the editor is writing in regards to the fact that a nearby town went "wet" in a recent election. You have likely surmised that the opposite of dry is wet. This smart bit of prose is proof positive that there are tolerant, well-spoken people in America's twenty-second state.



1.30.09



What's In A Name?

Random first names from the Decatur Daily's Letters to Santa, Christmas 2007: Jazmine, Aaliayh, Cailee, Khoi, Annsley, Kamerin, Endia, Aligha, Brelynn, and... Z'Lyrical. That's right. Z'Lyrical. 1.26.09



History

History is being made right before my eyes. Over a million people have converged on Washington DC to see Barack Obama inaugurated as our next president. I got up at 5am PST to watch the proceedings. 5am is basically still yesterday to me... and I'm aware that 4 hours is a lot of time to watch the talking heads yammer leading up to the actual inauguration. But I didn't want to miss a minute of it. A skinny black guy is about to become the most powerful person in the world. Not just any skinny black guy... Mr. Barack Obama, whose life to this point would have made a great story even if he hadn't won the election in November, will be the 44th president of the United States.

7:30am

We're an hour and a half away, now. In my head I'm looking forward and back at the same time. For the last 8 years I've lived under what I believe is an incompetent administration. But that is looking back, and I'm trying to curtail my penchant for nostalgia and face forward. What's done is done.

6pm

I ended up watching TV most of the day. There was a lot to see. Chief Justice Roberts was using Jedi mind tricks to handicap the actual swearing in. Cheney looked like Mr. Potter. Dubya had to sit there while Obama called out his administration's litany of failures. The use of Lincoln's bible was profound. I managed to last until around suppertime - after his slow procession towards the White House and partway through the never-ending parade of marching bands. We're headed to an inauguration party at a friend's house. There will be a fire and libations. Outdoors at night in January. I love California. 1.20.09

I Thought the Day Would Never Come




This day was coming all along. Change the names, change the faces - but somebody was going to get inaugurated as the President of the United States tomorrow at high noon EST. It could have been a woman - the first, incidentally. It could have been the oldest man to ever put his hand on a bible on January 20th. The election process took FOREVER but we got a clear winner. There was much gnashing of teeth and many avoided conversations with conservative relatives and friends. They are still my friends and I am elated that the day has nearly arrived.

The picture above is a screen shot of the corner of my desktop widgets. That Dubya widget has been on there since the day total was well over 600. I'm wondering what will happen to it when it ticks down to zero. Will it just sit there like the Obama election countdown ticker? I am sort of hoping that it turns into a picture of him in a clown suit. I like the fact that the larger of the two Obama tickers counts down to inauguration instead of just election day. All in all I am looking forward to removing all three of them. I took down my yard sign on election night. At that moment I knew that Obama wasn't mine anymore. He was no longer the junior senator from my home state of Illinois - the guy I had pegged as my golden boy candidate for years before anyone outside of Chicago or Springfield knew his name. Obama/Biden's 365 electoral votes will put Mr. Obama in the White House tomorrow.

The news says that Dubya and Laura have already moved out. I recall researching him during primary season in 2000. I had a feeling in my gut that he would be trouble... and that was back when September 11th was just a day that came between September 10th and and 12th - another sleepy day that teetered between late summer and early fall. We'll have plenty of time to look back. He's right about one thing... history will judge him and be the "decider" as for where he falls on the presidential continuum.

But today... today is his last day in office. He's pardoning people - in the tradition of the lamest of lame duck presidents. Is he walking around stacks of boxes remembering the last 8 years of his life? I'm wondering where he'll sleep tonight. Is the White House's main bedroom like a hotel room tonight? Where a maid service will come in, change the sheets, leave a paper strip on the toilet and some new soap?

To think of all the times I've cursed his name. I doubt I'll ever forget how I felt on election night in 2004 when America elected him for real... for a second term. I thought of that feeling every second I walked around in the chilly desert air in Las Vegas knocking on doors with a clipboard that had an Obama sticker on it. The thought kept me warm.

Dubya's touted "political capital" went right down the shitter along with the rest of the monetary capital. We can't blame him for all our woes... but a lot of bad things happened on his watch. It would be hard to be mercilessly scrutinized and have your every world documented and captured by a thousand cameras and microphones. It seems to me that the roots of our current financial boondoggle can be traced back to Reagan's crusade for deregulation. I've said it many times, Bill Clinton was my favorite republican president, so I know all too well how he kept that train right on rolling. And as for Dubya - I can't imagine we'll ever see his face on our money. It was his face we were seeing on the TV as all our money went away.

I doubt that these will be my final words on George W. Bush, whom I have almost never referred to by name, preferring instead to call him Dubya. It just fit so well for a guy with whom everyone said they would love to sit down over a couple beers - or have over for a Sunday BBQ after which everyone starts their workweek with a hangover. Well, we've got the hangover and now we must get to work.

Tomorrow is a new day. We've got fewer than 24 hours before the changing of the guard. Who knows what will befall us as a nation... as a people. But I am filled with hope that we will now have a steady, studied and contemplative hand on the wheel. Please remember, my countrymen and women... it isn't Barack Obama who will change America. We will. It is up to us to do the work. President Obama is there to steer the ship and inspire us to be the best version of ourselves. But we're the ones shoveling coal into the boilers, swabbing the deck and raising the sails.

Can one man really change the world? Gandhi did. Dr. King did. Lincoln did. I hope that the man I put up there is up to the task. All eyes are on you, Barry. You've got the ball. Now, run! 1.19.09



2 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 11

This year goes to eleven. Here we go again. 1.6.09

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