Yeah, I’m having a little trouble trying to sleep, had a bunch of drama going on today, but I was bored and digging through my files and found this:

Wait, well before I you listen, I want to give you the story behind it. When I first moved out, I made the mistake of moving in with this guy who was friends with the girl I was dating at the time. He turned out to be a real pain in the ass, anal (no pun intended) bastard. Anyways, I finally got fed up and decided to find my own place with a good friend of mine. The guys name was Mike and he was always bitching about little things like not leaving our shoes at the door, or being too loud outside after 10:00, or me always having friends over. Well I’m sorry dude, but we are in college and that’s kind of what we do. Anyways, one night a bunch of girls and a couple buddies of mine were hanging out at my house. Cail was there and he and I were playing guitar in my room. Everyone decided to come in and hang out in there, and my buddy Abla started free versing to our music. Unfortunately (as I recall) I didn’t start recording until after we had done some of the best ones. Abla is quite a good free-verser (is that how you say it? free.. free versey, I dunno) and although it doesn’t really stand out in these songs, Abla has come up with some incredibly hillarious and awesome rhymes to our songs, and he seems to never run out of good ones. We usually do this during a night of drinking. Some of our classics are “The Hooters Hot Wings Song,” “Kung Pai Chicken,” and “A Sad Day for Lobsters.” Anyways, here is an example of when Abla was free versing to the topic of me moving out and how much of an anal loser my roomate was. I urge you to listen to the whole thing to catch some of the good parts. I will make a mental note to try and do this more often and actually record it. Cail’s coming home soon so we’ll have to throw our guitars together with Abla and a case of beer. Fortunately this Fall, Abla, Cail, and I will be roomates up in Athens. I think there’s some real talent in our drunkeness heheh.

[ Here’s the File ]

Here’s something else I found. This is just Cail and I fucking around while practicing before we were going to play somewhere one night. It includes a mock-up of Eminems’ 8 Mile song, Third Eye Blind’s Jumper, and Cail’s song “Just Enough.” We were taking a shot at Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind and how he always sings high notes with his throat in his songs. This is probably about a year old. Cail had written a new song and I was attempting to create a lead line for it. By the way, disregarding my awful lead, Cail refuses to play this song anymore, and he didn’t want to put it on our record, so you all should tell him how excellent the song is.

[ Here’s the File ]

“Am I drunk as shit, or does this really rhyme?” - Abla

Until next time,

Alright, I’m going to vent on something that is probably completely and utterly uninteresting to anyone reading this, but it’s late and noone’s awake for me to yell at.

So last night (Satuday) I saw my ex-girlfriend’s sister at a billiards club. If any of you know my past, it’s the girl that I dated for fuckin ever that fucked me over for another guy. Before I go on, I would like to say that I’ve been over her for quite some time now, and if any of you actually read this on a regular basis, you will recognize that this is probably the first time I’ve even brought her up in over a year. Anyways, I haven’t seen her sister in damn near a year or two, so I figured I’d hang out there for a while and catch up on what was going on with her. Well, apparantly she was pretty fucked up, yet suprisingly coherant when I got there, but by the time the place closed, her eyes were barely open, her speech was slurred, she could barely stand still without falling over, and to top it all off, she was about to drive home. None of her friends were willing to drive her home (granted it is pretty far away) and I got the impression she really was about to drive home. Well, I had only had a few drinks, and I didn’t have much going on the next morning, so I offered to leave my car in the parking lot, drive her home, and crash there, so long as she could take me back to my car early the next morning. Well, about 2 minutes after she sat down in the car she was passed out. Well the problem was, I had a vague idea where her apartment complex was, but I had no fucking clue what room number was hers. I tried everything in the book to wake her up, but she was 100% passed out. I managed to finally find her apartment complex, but the place had hundreds and hundreds of apartments. This put me in sort of a bind. The only thing I could get out of her was whispered gibberish. I think she named about 7 different apartment numbers (from what I could understand.) My last resort was to call my ex to find out where her sister lived. This was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do, but I was out of ideas, and I wasn’t about to drive 45 minutes back to my house at that time in the morning (through some of the worst areas of towns for cops) when my BAC was probably a little over the legal limit. Well, she didn’t answer. So I spent almost an hour trying to wake this girl up, she was seriously that wasted (I ended up having to carry her out of the car, up stairs, and into her room.) By this time my phone was dead, so I checked her phone for her sisters (my ex’s) number and called it again, no answer. Maybe it was the fact that nearly 2 hours had passed and she sobered up a little bit, but she finally woke up (after a lot of yelling) and gave me a number. I found the apartment, and amazingly, one of her keys unlocked it. Anyways, I ended up crashing on this tiny-ass love seat and got about 3 hours of sleep, only to wake up with a sore back. When she woke up, she had no recollection of anything, and didn’t even remember seeing me at the billiards club, which wasn’t really a big suprise to me. She took me to my car, I went home, and spent the whole damn day cleaning my house (we’ve got an inspection soon.) I ended up falling asleep and just woke up about an hour ago. I, like a lot of people, have a bad-habit of checking away messages (it’s not uncommon.) So I read her boyfriend’s (who I used to actually hang out with) message and it says:

hey heres an idea…. how bout stupid ass ex-bfs dont call my gf at 4 am and wake me up and how bout they also dont do it an hour later under my gfs sister phone….grow up jeff

My response:

Well Bill, first of all what’s funny is I never had a problem with you. I actually felt you were one of a very few number of people who actually deserved Jennifer, so naturally, I was quite shocked to see this animosity towards me. Second of all, fuck you, you insecure selfish sad motherfucker. I spent my Saturday night taking care of your girlfriend’s sister because neither you nor her were even an option (when I asked her) for people who might give her a ride home. You just assume that I’m making a pathetic late-night phone call to my ex-girlfriend (of what 2 fucking years? yeah I’ve moved on buddy) rather than consider that maybe there’s actually an important reason why I’m calling. That’s really sad and pathetic, so maybe you’re the one that needs to grow up? Good luck with Jennifer. Maybe you’ll be the first guy that she’s never broken up with after promising you the world. (There’s a list of em’ if you haven’t noticed.)

P.S. Sorry for waking you up.

Fuck you Party Poker. Fuck you and I hope you Die.

Going on lately…

I’ll go ahead and start off by saying that I’m sick again. It appears this time it’s a bacterial infection, but as always, whenever I get the slightest little bug, my tonsils swell up to the point where I can hardly swallow anything without clenching my fist in pain. I went to an ENT (ear nose throat) specialist and they decided that I need to have them removed. So now I have to have surgery and undergo a two-to-three week healing process, which (as you will find out below) is not so good timing for me. We still have to finish recording out album (and it’s impossible for me to sing at this point) and I’ve also got a number of other things going on. The good news is that my voice is supposed to improve after they take my tonsils out. I have always had large tonsils which if you can imagine, kind of dampen the ability of my voice. I know I don’t have the best voice, and I’m not reaching for excuses, but it will be much easier for me to improve my vocal techniques when my tonsils aren’t changing sizes every other day. Unfortunately, it will probably be after I record my vocals on the album until I have the surgery.

So I’m starting to make plans to move up to Athens. I have quit my day job which has given me a lot of extra time on my hands. Speaking of which, I have to give my work phone back, so if any of you have my “210″ number, please don’t call it anymore as you will be talking to a new employee of the company I used to work for. Fortunately, with the extra time off, I’ve been playing a LOT of guitar. I would say that within the last two weeks I have written about four (which I feel are pretty good) songs. I’m still trying to finish up recording “After Three” so I can post it here for you all. After that, I’ll probably do some really quick (probably just one vocal track and one guitar track) recordings of the new ones. One of the negative things about my surgery is that I’m going to have to hold off even longer on the move to Athens. This means that there is a chance I’m going to have to find a temporary job, and I’ve never really had to work a shitty part-time job before. I was thinking about joining the Best Buy “Geek Squad” so that I will be able to throw some experience with customers into my resume. We’ll see… I also thought about picking up a job at Gamestop or EB Games.

Starving Artist Solutions is getting more business than ever! I’ve actually had to bring in another designer (and it looks like I’m going to have to find ANOTHER) to handle all of the new clients we have coming in. Those of you who helped me out with new clients, (you know who you are) thank you!

I’ve got to get running, but I would like to give a shout out to my special friend from Saturday night. You (also) know who you are. Thank you!!! See I was having a bad night Saturday night, and I guess one of my friends could tell. Well, it only took her about 20 seconds to make me feel better (like a bolt of lightning my mood changed for th ebetter) and I just wanted to say thanks babe.

“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.” - Green Day

Until next time,

So, I’m going to be transfering here pretty soon, which means I’m going to have to give up my job. I have always had a vision for a company, and the beginning stages of that vision is Starving Artist Solutions. You can read more about the company at [ www.freebandsites.com ] The idea is similar to that of PureVolume, MP3.com, and MySpace, but the difference between Starving Artist Solutions and those other sites is that we offer an actual full-functional, unique website for artists. The idea is that artists shouldn’t have to pay hefty web fees just to get their music out there, when they are paying so much already just to create their music and try to make a name for themselves. I also would like to one day turn Starving Artist Solutions into a gateway for independant artists, where they would be able to share knowledge, tips, contacts, etc. It is currently donation-based, but right now I need more clients to keep it that way. I really do not want to have to switch to an alternative means of generating revenue, but it takes money to keep the company up, so hopefully I won’t have to resort to that.

With that said, I’m asking you guys for your help. I’m not asking for donations (although they are more than welcome) but instead for you to try and refer some artists to the company. The good news is that 1. You will be contributing to a cause that really helps, and 2. I’m having a contest.

So, the person who can send me the mose clients by June 1st (approximately when I’m going to be leaving) will win 3 music albums of their choice. I will have them shipped to your door the day I announce the winner. The rules are pretty straightforward… just tell any local musicians (or maybe ask a friend of a band you discovered online, etc) about freebandsites.com and if they want to apply, just to mention that “Your Name” told them about it.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I guess I owe you all an update on the many things we’ve got going on. Recording has been going very well. Right now drum tracks, bass, strings, and piano are being added in and mixed. All we really have left to do is to go back in, record our permanent vocals (right now we just have scratch vocals) along with backup vocals, and any kind of extra instrumental hooks we want to add in. I must say that being in the studio is totally fucking sweet. The first day we went in, the environment was pretty intimidating, but as soon as we walked out the door, I wanted to dive right back in and work some more. After that, I have fallen in love with working in the studio. Granted it is hard work, I think I’ve discovered something that I absolutely and passionately want to pursue.

I still owe you guys a multitude of pictures, but it’s just a matter of me getting them from the people who have them and/or remembering to get them off my work computer and bring em’ home. St. Patricks Day (as I failed to mention previously) was pretty fucking rad. I got to see a lot of my old buddies and my good friend [ Tim Ballisty ] even made it down for the weekend. You can check out an interesting story on his website about how he walked into the wrong house thinking it was mine and saw an old lady. One thing Tim did fail to mention was that he almost got his ass kicked at a bar downtown. Yep. So Tim being the lightweight he is, decides to start talking to the biggest freaking guy he could possibly have found in this bar. I mean this guy looks like a Marine / Linebacker / Major Leage Baseball Steroid User and Tim starts a conversation with him while I’m about 30 feet away trying to talk to this girl. To make things easier, we will call this guy “Tinyballs Steroids” Anyways, I turn around and see Tim talking to this guy and decide I should go check it out, next thing I hear is Tim says “well one day you know, someone might really kick your ass.” I don’t know what the hell they were talking about, but I knew that was not a good thing to say to Tinyballs Steroids.. So I can tell the guy was pissed, and he calls over to his “boys” to come over and listen to this. Tinyballs is starting to turn red, and so I get in the middle of he and Tim and try and talk some since into him about how he was just drunk and noone wants to go to jail, etc. All of the sudden Tinyballs walks away from me and I’m thinking “Jeff you’re one reasonable guy” and I turn around to accept Tim’s thank you, only Tim has fucking dissappeared. I mean, he must have zipped out of the bar and down the street in a matter of 10 seconds. So now I realize that this guy is actually going outside to try and find Tim. I rally up our crew and tell them the situation, and we go outside to try and find Tim to make sure he’s alright. Instead we find Mr. Steroids outside looking for Tim. After a brief drunken investigation, he realizes that Tim has dipped and assumes that I’m his friend, so he gets in my face. I immediately evaluate my chances of beating this guy in a fight. I subtracted my body weight from his, multiplied that by the derivative of how pissed off he was, and divided that between the combined average of our drunkeness. The answer to this equation was off the charts against my favor. So I immediately switch over to “bout to get my ass kicked” mode and browsed through my list of options. There wasn’t a blunt object within close range, so that wasn’t going to help. I had to rule out “kick him in the balls” because I figured with the amount of roids he was on, it probably wouldn’t hurt him. Finally, I pondered the “get all your friends to help you fight this one guy” option and looked over to my friends. 2 of them were piss-drunk, one of my greatest assets, Scott, was looking at me and just shaking his head like “good luck buddy” and then I looked over at my other friend (also named Scott, but we call him Stinky Scott) and Stinky Scott had a hand full of change ready to clock the guy. Well, either way, I was going to get the shit beat out of me, so instead I tried to reason with the guy again. He asked me if Tim was my friend and I said “no, I just saw he was really drunk and didn’t want you to kick his ass.” Apparantly the guy either believed me, or was flattered that I thought he would kick Tim’s ass, (which is equivalent to thinking that sticking your hand in a fire, in fact, hurts.) So I reiterated that noone wants to go to jail and he walked away. We found Tim about 2 blocks away peeking out from another bar.

For some reason, Tim forgot to mention that on his website.

“I know it’s been hard to wait so long on a miracle, but wasn’t it good to feel so strong and invincible…” - July For Kings

Until next time,