West Indian Girl

Yeah this post is a bit late but at least it’s up. Last sunday night we got some pretty tight seats comped to us by all the great people at Astralwerks. i mean, come on, the hollywood bowl on a beautiful night in la in a great box near the stage (thanx everyone!). Anyway, it was actually our first night out as a band in quite a while. Unfortunately i dont have any picutres of this night but i wish i did cos it was so damn funny. Air was great – they played with an orchestra – to be honest with you i missed the opening acts but i heard they were great too. the one Stereolab song i heard sounded good. Hahahha the funny stuff was the after party at the bowl. This party rocked – free champagne is always a good thing. people dont drink enough champagne. remember “if you say no to champagne you say no to life” (do you know where that quote is from – if you do – i will personally call you to tell you how much i love you.) Ok, the after party – i think trent reznor was there but i didnt see him – i loved that “fragile” record he made a few years ago – drum sounds he got were amazing(this album was overlooked by way too many). Angela and Chris thought they saw chris robinson there but it was just his body double. It was hilarious to see everyone in the band mixing it up. I wish i had pictures!!!….

i found some an old pictures of my bass cabinet (a 70′s ampeg 8-10) and it made me laugh to think about its long hard road to the top. first off, for those who don’t know the 8-10 in the name means 8 ten inch speakers. the speakers in my cab are dusty and worn but they better than any other cab i have ever played thru. it’s a classic man. i should point out that at some point i had decided to paint the cabinet white (dont ask why but i did). anyway the first picture was take about 2 years ago. at that point we were just starting to record songs for the record and i wasnt using it at all. it was a tv stand in my apartment.

the second picture was taken in our old studio in the hills. i decided to step it up as a piece of furniture and had a blue plexiglass top cut for it. there, the cab saw plenty of action as a coffee table and was frequently praised and admired. i must say this was one of my better ideas – as a table this cab was pretty awesome. the third picture is how it looks today and my oh my does it look smooth. once we finished recording the record and i knew its days as a coffee table were numbered i decided to give it the proverbial los angeles face lift. took it to my friends furniture shop (thanx frank) and this guy worked some serious magic on it. he stripped the whole thing down and put a great finish on it with a thick coat of lacquer.

i have better pics of it (the cool ones of when it was actually getting refinished) but i think i lost them. anyway, there she is in her final resting place in the studio. the fish that is on top of my set up is a pinata that i bought from some store i drive by on the way to practice. i think its nemo.

– F.Ten 4:44 pm Sept 25

i think my tennis career is over -  i kind of over dosed on it. anyway, chris carter showed up at the courts today and schooled us. the kid isnt flashy (on the court that is) but he’s consistent. these pictures say it all. carter not only brings a winning look but more importantly a winning attitude.

these pics are so dumb –F. Ten 9/24

i’m gonna start posting images with some of these blog entries just to spice things up a bit. it will be funny to add visuals to all of this nonsense. we all like to watch anyway. so my friend sascha sent me a funny link from a dutch site where we were the “tip van de week”. i played tennis again today and totally kicked heidi’s ass again. i’m just waiting for her to stop playing because it can’t be that much fun anymore. besides, we bet on every game and she loses the bet every time. one of the bets she lost today was that she has to walk up to a stranger of my choice and say “hi i’m a hermaphrodite would you like to see my penis”. what else – my apartment is still a mess – i will take pictures of the studio later tonight and post them this morning. i would like to give a big shout out to the 13 people in miami that bought our record. hahahah — F.Ten 4:48 pm Sept 22

today i gave some girl i know a west indian girl cd and she gave me an orange yoga mat. i also started reading a book on buddhism and some other book on living in the “now”. my dad sent me a microcassette documenting his life – that’s probably the best thing he has ever done cos its a real interesting story. we came up with a new set list at practice tonight – we also worked on the chorus of hollywood. i think the shit sounds tight. i ate korean food again tonight around 1:30 – this place is called hal ma nie jeep – i always get the bi bim bop cos it seems like everything else in there is soup. i went with my tennis partner who shall remain nameless – she’s actually an asexual worm.

speaking of which, big grudge match tomorrow at noon. it’s gonna get real old if i school her on the court again. trying to get rob to play but he needs to find a chick so we can play mixed doubles. oh, back to the band…we are gonna play in front of our managers and errol from astralwerks tomorrow night at our loft. it will be nice to see errol. i named my new fighting fish vito because sal passed away last week. sal was red, vito is bluish purple. this entry was pretty fucking random. i’m bored. who’s awake now? — F.Ten 3:22 am sept 22

went out to st nicks to watch the vikings on tv. they sucked. we drank too much. the best part of the night was seeing the west indian girl cd in the juke box. went to rehearse for a few hours – tony pissed all over the hallway in the warehouse – the set is sounding great. practice again tonight at 8. i just ate sushi…F.Ten 1:24am

practice was great last night. we are continuing to fine tune our set. i am now starting to play my big muff on the chorus of hollywood which is pretty damn exciting if you ask me. i love distortion on bass. big muffs need to be made with a power adapter – sovtek was so stupid when they didnt manufacture the pedal without an adapter plug. why? the only pedal you still need to use a battery for. anyway, rehearsal again tonight around 10pm. today would end up being a fantastic day if the minnesota vikings beat the eagles tonight. i think i’m really the only one in the band that is into sports this much, well that’s not really true cos rob is into basketball, and mark and chris like to surf. speaking of sports i kicked my friend’s ass today in tennis. it was a grudge match with that girl that embarrassed me on the court the other day. anyway 6-0 6-1 was the final. too bad she talked so much shit and lost both sets and bets. anyway, i will let everyone know when i finally step up from playing against girls. playing against girls is fun – they wear short shorts and tiny tops….that really can’t be bad. lets face it though, it’s kinda weak beating girls  but hey, in all fairness i will take on anyone – this is only the second time in 4 years that i have played. west indian girl will take on anyone in doubles. let us know what you want to play for and we will do it. we should film it – it will be funny. we actually had a video idea about playing tennis on the roof of our building and when you went to dive for a shot you actually dove off the building and starting flying through deep space dressed in full on tennis gear. –F. Ten 4:00pm sept 20

what’s better than watching footbal on a sunday afternoon with a few friends and some beer — well, i could thing of a few things but sometimes this is as good as it gets. below is a view from my perspective – this is todd’s apartment and that’s his bare foot to the right. that’s randy moss on the tv screen.

the next picture is what it would look like from randy moss’ perspective – that’s john my next door neighbor who rolls with me every sunday and that’s sascha sitting at the computer calculating how much he won the pool by. look at my dawg tony… he rocks hard

– F. Ten 4:27pm Sept 19th

im sure you all have noticed that i dont really like to capitalize or use apostrphes in all the correct places – hey, we cant all be perfect. i just need to get it out of my brain as fast as possible — F. Ten

well the show/glorified rehearsal started out like it wasnt going to happen at all. rob had some sort of stomach flu and was puking when we tried to run through the songs around 8pm. needless to say we were very close to calling all of our friends and telling them the show was off. tough shit though — by the time we thought of that bright idea it was too late. rob went home and tried to puke some more while we all just chilled out as more and more guests arrived. it was a real surprising and nice thing to have so many people come down. i would say 30 or so lucky people got to see west indian girl’s first .. live experiencewe only played 5 songs Still Lost, Monterey, Trip, Dream, and Hollywood because rob was just too sick. hey, the kid’s got heart though. for it being our first time in front of people i think it went pretty well. we definitely have some things to work on but it sounded pretty good. the vibe was all right – there was drinking on the roof and a party in the loft – can’t be beat chris jones our manager even made it down – good to see that guy out late. my friend todd brought his dog down so tony had his girlfriend there. i remember passing around a bottle of tequila at the end of the night. thanx to chris carter for getting the word out – he did a great promo job. and thanx to everyone that was there – you may not know it but this was a key moment in the history of west indian girl.i should post some pictures but i only took a couple and everyone was gone by then. i think scoot took some — i will try to get them and post em up. it’s sat night now and i’m just staying in tonight – we have practice tomorrow night. ok as far as these pics go the first one is of robert james this is after the show when he was feeling better, the second one is of john who played harmonica on the song trip, the third one is of mark lewis in the midst of us doing tequila shots , and the last one is of the lovely gable carr. can you say photogenic? — F. Ten 10:40 PM

i just played tennis and i lost to a girl. can you believe that…a girl. she was good though. tough. my back hand sucks. anyway, in my efforts to quit smoking i am trying to get some more cardio in my life. so far so good – my lungs are loving it. i walked by 2 rooms filled with old people playing bridge….it was hilarious considering my tennis attire. hmmm, so i’ve got some dude coming over my place soon – he is trying to pitch me on a video. i’m going to walk tony and talk to rob and my managers on the phone about our new website redesign. — F. Ten 3:52

no practice tonight. i ended up going to a dive bar called the bounty on wilshire. lots of old men drinking miller lite laughing. i went to see hadi today and he gave me a bunch of cool t-shirts. so we are playing a little unannounced show tomorrow night at our loft. it should be pretty cool and will techinically be our first LA show. i think people are gonna freak out about parking on the street outside our space because we play right in the heart of skid row. i think it is pretty safe there although mark got his car broken into down there once. i have pretty much paid off all the guys that sleep out on the street near my truck. i give them clothes or money or cigs or the paper and they’ve got my back. they’re all pretty cool. just sucks that they dont have enough warm clothes. i’m not sure if the other guys in the band did this but i told my friends that are coming down tomorrow to bring blankets or something warm for the people that are gonna be sleeping outside their car. i have a feeling we will play pretty well. the air show is next week at the hollywood bowl. that should be cool. there’s a slight chance we may dj the after party but i dont think that is going down. maybe next time. — F.Ten 3:03 am

i just got back from reheasal and i’m hungry. our set goes like this: Still Lost, Miles from Monterey, Trip, Dream, What are you Afraid of, Northern Sky, Hollywood, Green. the set feels real good – we are finally starting to rock these songs way harder than how they are on the record. it feels great to abuse them. rob, chris, and mark all went to eat burritos after practice at this crappy little mexican place downtown. it’s cool cos it’s open all night. i had to go walk tony – i think im gonna make some chicken and salad cos i’m fucking hungry. i havent been eating well lately. last night i ate korean food with sascha and heidi though. good stuff. bi bim bop. i’m going to go look at new basses tomorrow – im also going to see hadi our merch guy – not only does hadi make the best shirts he’s a minnesota viking fan. — F.Ten 4:05 am

We decided to start the set with “Still Lost” and I’m thinking it works pretty well as an opener for now. Things are going pretty great, I think we have a pretty nice set and are finally starting to play really well together. We also worked on some new material which is pretty massive. I can’t wait to play that song live. We have a new girl singing in the band now – she’s come into the fold a bit late but I think she will get things figured out pretty quickly. If all goes well we will starting a west coast tour in October. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of LA. October can’t come fast enough. — F.Ten 3:14am.