--------------- | various and sundry
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3/12/2005
Thursday on marketplace there was a piece regarding south by southwest in specific and music in general, and i pretty much was really happy and agree with what was said. go give it a listen. the internet makes me excited for music. i found out about last.fm last week, even though i had been using audioscrobbler for over a year. give it a try. instant good radio station can't be beat, especially for free.

posted by ryan 10:39 AM

2/3/2005
hello again. i hope someone reads this still. i have had a very eventful couple of months. 2 weeks ago, my car died and I had to have my girlfriend drive me to work for a week. the following weekend, i went to my hometown and purchased a new car. well, it's almost new. it's got 16,000 miles on it and it's a 2004. nothing fancy, it just drives relentlessly (a very good quality in a car). at first, the car dealership quoted us a great interest rate and a low payment and everything was great, but then my checkered past came back to haunt me. a few days later, i was already driving the car around nashville and the business manager guy calls me and tells me that my interest rate and payment has gone up (it had already gone up while i was at the dealership, but at this point it had reached an almost illegal rate). long story short, they gave me a sour deal, and in the end my awesome grandfather co-signed w/ me on a personal loan from the bank, and we got a really good deal. i like the responsibility of paying $250 a month for something that will be mine to keep in the end. this is why i hate renting so much. it's the biggest expense i have, and in the end, i have nothing to show for it. speaking of renting, i moved to nashville, and life is so much better. i don't want to talk shit about murfreesboro (since it has been so good to me), but the 'underachiever and proud of it' boro stereotype was starting to weigh on me. i no longer work part-time at a retail store. i have a full-time corporate job, making better money. i have no torturous things in my life to write about, and that does sometimes make it hard to be creative. i think i secretly want to be matt pelham from the features. married with kids, happy, touring, and singing about it all with as much attitude as anybody. someone once told me a story about seeing matt pelham standing outside wal-mart with his kids and a shopping cart full of groceries (i guess his wife had gone to get the car or something). i remember thinking to myself how awesome it was that the biggest rock star in town was even AT wal-mart, much less standing outside guarding the groceries and the kids and waiting to be picked up at the curb. just TRY to imagine some of the other 'rockers' around here doing that. it's just not possible (unless you are in aireline). i suddenly can't wait to really get back into playing music again. we've been dabbling and doing some preliminary recording, and it's gone well. 'revive' is long gone, almost a year old (but full of 2 and 3 year old material), and we're really ready for something else. i am actually starting to think that it will be incredible. for a long time i thought we'd peaked and that we were growing apart. business decisions and website shit and the color of our t-shirts will always end in a huge fight, but the songs always seem to get better. now we just need to remember how to play our instruments. say a prayer for us.


posted by Aaron 11:16 PM

12/29/2004
this year for christmas i got a suitcase and a chair and a coat and a trip to england. this was more than i deserved or expected.


posted by ryan 9:38 PM

11/1/2004
Thanks to a friend of mine, I will be writing reviews for CMJ New Music Monthly (yes, the awesome magazine with the free CD in every issue that you can't find anywhere around here anymore except for Grimey's). I reviewed the new American Music Club record a couple months ago in the magazine, so they asked me back (sort of). Buy an issue sometime and look for me. I make no apologies for my untrained, unprofessional writing style.


posted by Aaron 5:15 PM

8/1/2004
mr. childrey makes the best hamburgers i have ever tasted.


posted by ryan 5:09 PM

6/12/2004
Most everyone who knows me well knows I am a very liberal person when it comes to my feelings about politics. Like most of the people who are my age and in my "profession", I don't like George W. Bush. So, all of the fanfare regarding the passing of Ronald Reagan has had me thinking about what it is that I REALLY want in a leader. Is it that I want my political agenda to be heartily fulfilled? Is it that I want someone who doesn't laugh at his own bad jokes and who doesn't say endless amounts of words incorrectly? Or is it that I would really just like to look into the face of the president and actually think he/she truly cares? I think that is what I have learned by watching all the footage of Reagan over the years. It's not all good. The so-called "liberal media", with all its praise of Reagan over the past week, still finds ample time to mention Reagan's downfalls. The Iran Contra scandal was talked about in depth, especially in a pre-death Reagan documentary on PBS. He was absolutely grilled by the press about the controversy (in a way that astounds me considering all the accusations against the current Bush presidency... MAN, he's getting off light!). And in reference to his overall handling of certain presidential matters, he was called lazy, detatched, and many other deroggatory things. But one thing I can say about Reagan is that he truly did seem to care about the direction of our country and the peace of the world. He was actually someone who was not hard to believe, or even more importantly, to believe in. It's amazing that on paper, Reagan and Bush are not very different. But in action, they have handled the world's most esteemed office in almost opposite ways. Bush's smiles are forced, his speeches are erratic and unfocused, his response to 9/11 has been wreckless, and he's the only president of the U.S. in my lifetime who actually embodies the international spirit of "the bad guy". Reagan did impress his conservatism on American in negative ways: the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and he pretty much ignored the emerging AIDS crisis. But all told, all U.S. presidents have a black mark or two on their tenures in office. And as far as Republicans go, Reagan was as good as it gets. And if he were alive and running right now, I might be inclined to vote for him. Not for his policies, but for his interest in world peace, and for his peaceful way of trying to achieve it. For my moral dollar, he's a far more suitable leader than Clinton was. Honestly, that's a bitter pill for myself to swallow, given my beliefs. One thing remains constant in my quest to find someone worth voting for: George W. Bush is a wreckless cowboy who deserves a "boot in his ass" in November. That, to me, is the absolute first step toward any kind of world peace. Four more years of W, and we're four more feet deep down in the dirt. We need someone to trust, at least when it comes to our generation's ability to eventually raise children in the world in a few years.

posted by Aaron 12:43 AM

4/23/2004
i would like to reiterate my dislove for the acronym IBL. i would like to iterate for the first time my love for the protomen.

posted by ryan 1:21 PM

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