New gig announcement and other news

 Here’s the latest The Birds of Play news. We’re still drying out and healing up as the result of last week’s storm. But it looks like we’ll be  practicing this Wednesday. Not sure what is on the agenda for the session but my guess is you’ll see work on songs like I Feel So Old, Solstice and Know Better.  From one bird to another, I hope you’re feeling better and that you can eat the frozen veggies soon.

 

In the interim,  James has secured us another gig at Sally O’Briens for Thursday, July 22. That comes about two months after our next gig, Thursday, May 27 at Sally O’Briens.

One thing we’ve talked about in the past is playing a month-long residency at Sally’s or a place like that (Bull McCabes, Precinct, etc.) Hopefully, the more gigs we play, the more songs we have to fill said residency.

Finally, our friend Jeremy sent along two new songs as part of the Verse Versus Chorus catalogue. VVC is The Birds of Play minus John and adding Jeremy. We had to give Jereremy the boot because he refused to grow a beard and he insisted on licking James and me on the elbow when we weren’t looking. Next time, ask. OK? Speaking of asking, I’ll try to gain permission to upload at least one of the songs so you folks can hear it.  

Cute St. Patrick’s Day photos

Ok, so I admit it, we knew the folks at Sally O’Briens were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Wednesday. Well, everyone except Johnnycakes. But lets not tell him.

Anyways, here are a gallery of photos from the evening including one taken by James’ nephew, Brandon. Doesn’t he look like a cuter version of  Weezer’s lead singer,  Rivers Cuomo? Discuss!

Stayed tuned for another Sally O’s-inspired blog this weekend featuring one cute staff member whose name we hear OVER and OVER and OVER again!

Birds of turd

Crap, what happened to that extra hour? It’s already mid-morning. No matter, it will be worth it in the long run as it no longer will be getting dark by tea time.

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day in birdland. Word has it that James spent time working on some tunes in between trips to the laundromat and Sally O’Briens. Not sure how much he loved the ideas he was working on since in his Facebook profile he used the phrase “polishing a turd.”  That inspired one of his Facebook friends to post this link about a Japanese dude who actually polishes them. Who knew?!

Melissa wanted to blame something on the rain. That brought up bad memories of horrible 80s music but I think that was her intention. Thanks Melli. You’re the Scritti Politti.

John, no idea!

I had date night with the wifey. We went out to a nice romantic Italian restauant in downtown Salem followed by drinks at The Old Spot just down the block. I had three beers and I was nice and toasty. Lightweight!

Here’s photo:

Well, that’s it for now. Enjoy the extra hour of sunlight.  Too bad it’s been raining cats and airplanes.

The Birds of Play performing on Chatroulette?

 

Driving along the back roads  of Amesbury and Newton, N.H., I came upon a breakthrough: a revolutionary way of expanding our fan-base if not our name recognition: sign onto Chatroulette and let people watch us practice. Ok, I know what you’re thinking: lame-o. We’re going to get NEXTED so fast and so often that it’s going to be a complete bust. Well, admittedly, I don’t think you’ll see Melissa show her bust nor do I think one of the three bearded members will be showing their members. But the way I look at it, many of the Chatroulette crowd try to get a laugh by dressing up as Batman and dancing on the screen to the tune of “The Safety Dance.” We at least will be performing some actual music and maybe say a swear or two.

Anyways, I sent the word out about my idea to other members of tBoP and got nothing. I mean nada, zilch, dead air in terms of replies. Sigh!

[Editor's note: not surprising but someone else has beaten us to the punch in terms of marketing their band on chatroulette. The name of that band? Holy Fuck. Well, fu, Holy Fuck for stealing my idea!}

PHOTOS: The Birds of Play practice 3-10-10

The Birds of Play practiced for about two hours last night with much energy and plenty of beer in the refrigerator. We worked on James’ neat new song ”Seed” for a while followed by remembering a song fragment we recorded more than a month ago less than two weeks ago, on February 28th. It’s a pretty grooving song with a lot of potential. James introduced his new solo for “Kevin Crowley,” which really rocked well. We then practiced “Halfway There” “I Guess This Is Hello” and “Know Better,” from the set list.

Using my wife’s camera, I video recorded versions of “Seed” and the new grooving song for reference sake.

In regards to beer: I had two that night, both Newcastle, while James and John each had two Sam Adamses. Melissa drank two blueberry flavored blackbeary wheat beers.

Random notes: Melissa wished me a happy 40th birthday. Johnnycakes used the F bomb. James earned $100 for hosting Trivia Night at The Precinct and I used my octave pedal for the first time in years.

Next practice is tentatively scheduled for Sunday since one of us might be holed up doing some work over the weekend.

(Now with accuracy edits by one of the NON-JOURNALIST birds, ahem! I’ll never trust a Dave Rogers article again!)

POLL & AUDIO: Who does James sound like the most?

For the many years I’ve known The Birds of Play’s James Christensen, we’ve periodically had discussions about which vocalist he sounds like. I’ve kept on insisting one while he’s thought I was out of my tree.  Well, it’s time we open this debate to the general public, or at least our friends. So, here are some random choices: Johnny Van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd, blue eyed soul vocalist Robert Palmer, Jeff Buckley, the chick who sings Tik Tok or the “other” category. I’ve included audio samples so you can make an informed choice. Here’s James song: outta my head.

Photos from most recent practice

These were taken by myself and Melissa after the infamous keyboard water torture  incident mentioned in previous blog. Enjoy!  

Water(key)boarding torture inflicted upon The Birds of Play

 (this photo doesn’t do justice to how much water was inside it)

It didn’t take long to determine what caused John McCarty of The Birds of Play to figure out why his keyboard all of a sudden decided to not work anymore last Sunday. As he was removing it from the keyboard stand prior to the start of Wednesday’s practice, a ton of water gushed out from underneath the keys and on to the cement floor of Melissa’s basement. How the water got into the keyboard, we aren’t sure. It was pretty freaky however and we joked that maybe the dead mice in Melissa’s basement had something to do with it (while they were alive, of course).

Well, we were lucky that John’s new keyboard came just in time for Wednesday’s practice. Here’s a photo of John tickling the keys.

It sure looks cooler and less cumbersome than the old silver one. John had a ball fiddling around with the dials, pads and keys. But after about five minutes of noodling, we booted him off the keys and back to his lead guitar duties. He came up with a really cool part to a newish James Christensen song called “Seed” that we worked on for about an hour. Afterwards, we practiced some of our songs from our Sally O’Briens set list.

Thanks again to John for ordering a new keyboard and ensuring its arrival in time for practice. He’s a great bird.

No practice on Sunday due to two birds being out of town for the weekend. We’ll be back in Melissa’s basement on Wednesday but keep your eyes open for new blog posts in the interim.

PS: Thanks to MMM for the inspiration for the blog post title.

Guess the The Birds of Play butt

 

Can you guess which one of The Birds of Play posed for this ass shot during yesterday’s practice? Please submit your guesses accordingly.

Drummer fears bassist consumed by wolves

The BoP drummer is shocked that the BoP bassist has not tweeted, blogged, or Facebooked a BoP update in over 24 hours. Given his propensity for such online-media disseminations, the drummer can only assume that the bassist  is, in fact, dead.

This theory is further corroborated by this, the most recent image posted from the bassist’s coworkers’ newsblogs under the heading “Damn, our coworker is being attacked by a wolf.”

On a related, and perhaps more interesting note: the spelling of the word “corroborate” was recently featured in a Trivia Night hosted by the male singer of tBoP at a local drinking establishment. For those who are curious, the correct spelling is as shown above.