Magdalena's Tea House Saturday...Snow Friday...Happy Ending to the Office

The word on the street is that we [meaning central Michigan] are going to get slammed with snow on Friday. Headaches for all. Will it happen? Will it happen enough for class to get cancelled? Who knows.

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So the Beasts of Burden and I will be returning to Lansing for a full set this Saturday, December 2nd at Magdalena's Tea House with Sh! the Octopus and Ukulele Ray! Ray starts at 7:30.

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Promoting that concert today, the State News, MSU's college newspaper, has run an interview about the Beasts and I. It can be found here. Here's the entire text from the interview, conducted by Erik Adams...

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Say Yes! to Mike Vasas and the Beasts of Burden
Local band will play at Magdalena's Tea House in Lansing on Saturday
By Erik Adams
November 29th, 2006


Who?

Mike Vasas (vocals, guitar, keyboards, cowbell), Ryan Malinich (drums), Brian Richard (bass), Brian Slagle (guitar, keyboards) and Eric Bredin (keyboards, harmonica, mandolin and guitar)

What?

The rock outlet for songwriter and MSU grad student Vasas.

Mike Vasas: When we started working on it, because I've always worked by myself, I said I wanted to have a band where it was like Elvis Costello and the Attractions, where I brought the songs, then we worked them out.

Any recorded material?

A self-titled debut album, released in July on Vasas' own Grammy Hall Records (available at several East Lansing retailers and streaming at www.mikevasas.com)

Where can I hear the band?

Saturday at Magdalena's Tea House, 2006 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing.

What's the sound?

A grab bag of all the styles that fly under the indie rock flag these days, put through the meat grinder of Vasas' studio-oriented mind-set.

Come again?

MV: My experience before this band was all in studio stuff, and I love the process of recording and trying to decide. I remember reading about the process of working on the Wilco record "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and before that I'd kind of made records as like, "Well this is how it needs to sound; I'm going to do it." And when (Wilco) said, "Oh, we're going to do a song the way it's supposed to be, and then we're going to do it 10 more ways that it may not be and find out those ways might be cooler," I was like, "Oh my God." So every song that we did had tons of stuff that we would mute and remove.

Detailing the process:

MV: Any kind of part I play, like a melodic part on a guitar or bass or anything, I end up singing it, because it's just easier that way. And in the studio, you have that ability. When you're in a rehearsal with everybody, it's like, "Let's bang it out."

When you're in the studio, you can kind of just sit there and go, "What does this need?" Or the best is saying, "What does this song not need?"

Put that in there, see if it works and say, "Now what has happened to this?"

So how does that translate live?

MV: One of the things I want to do is I want to present the best live rendition of a song as possible, but yet not do the same thing that's on the record, and I think our natural instinct was to just rock everything. And after a while, I started to be like some of these songs need to have some loud angst involved, but some of them don't. So we started coming up with new ways to try to do that.

And recently, I think within the last three shows, we actually started getting some people that weren't just saying, "Wow, you guys are intense, you guys are great live," but saying, "This stuff is cooler than on the record."

Vasas also is student teaching choir at Lansing's Everett High School. Do his kids know about his rock 'n' roll alter ego?

MV: I like bringing it to the kids, because otherwise they get the idea that a bunch of music teachers in public schools, all they want to talk about is Mozart, and that's not the case, most everybody has interests in other things.

What about your own tastes?

MV: I guess I'm a hipster geek, but I don't want to admit it. It's just there's certain elements that I can't stand.

I think genre-wise, I think I'm really attracted to any kind of music that sounds like it had some kind of process involved. Most recently, I've been listening to a lot of TV on the Radio.

But I think I always mix it up with a lot of songwriters, like I get into these completist things where I really want to get everything they've ever released, so it's been a lot of post-peak period Joni Mitchell stuff. It makes me so mad that she's like bottom-rung compared to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. She's just so good.

The No. 1 influence for me in that is Neil Young. The guy does whatever the hell he wants. People either get him or they don't.

The Lansing Lowdown, State News.

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Watched the second season of the office...and found this ADDITIONAL clip from the show...from the Christmas Special...

pancakes are fantastic.

So, the Pope is in Turkey, huh? The man who attempted an assassination of Pope Johnny Paul Deuce back in 1981 wants to "discuss theology" with the current Pope. When asked what kind of theology, Mehmet Ali Agca replied "the stuff with guns and dead popes...it's in one of the extra gospels." Reuters.

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It's that time again for voting for word of the year. Go to this site by Merrimam-Webster Inc. and vote! I think my vote would be for "Jagshemash."

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The new record, You'd Be So Much Happier If You Stopped Lying To Yourself (my first solo electronic record since January Songs which was released in early 2005) is slated for a February 2007 release. The Early Minor Quintet record will come out sometime in the late Winter or Spring. Both of these records I'm very excited about. They will both be available in limited numbers (100 hard copies of Early Minor Quintet and 25 of my solo record) through CD Baby, Amazon, Grammy Hall Records Shop, and digital distribution.

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In August, September, October, and November I will release a record, one at a time, from a new series of records via Grammy Hall Records. The series, called "Found Sound," will be a collection of records featuring reprocessing of audio material. The first in the series will be a collection of tracks processed and regrown from a 60 second guitar improvisation from Matt Mepham. The second in the series will be a collection of re-processed street musician samples (currently available as the Blog music, 'No Money.' The third release will be a mixture of a 3 audio events create two long drone-like tracks. The final release will be a single track entitled "The Golden Hearth" which manipulates a few audio events into a peaceful drone loop. All four of these records will be sold together in December 2007 as a 5-CD set (5th CD will be one more long peaceful drone never to be released elsewhere) in extremely limited release; only 10 will be available through Grammy Hall Records. Individual CDs will be available in each month.

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And finally...I had pancakes this morning again. I think I average about 3 small pancakes a day now...usually 6 on and then a day without them. I have no idea what the deal is, but I can't stop eating pancakes. Everybody goes through phases...when I was in high school I really liked Mueslix, and I also enjoyed the steak. Things change, I guess.

opera, thanksgiving, for your consideration, etc.

Went to an opera this Tuesday. Had my hair cut tuesday. Coincidentally, the opera I saw was Barber of Seville, put on by the Michigan Opera Theater's traveling troupe. They performed at Wharton Center. I was impressed with the comedy, although there were a few moments where the recitative didn't do much for me. Most of my issues with length came from my lack of familiarity with the opera format when staged live. I have quite a few recordings...I've seen many performances on video...I've seen many "scenes from..." but few full-length operas. I can see my voice teacher in college saying what a shame, and it is. My other issue was with the supertitles...a strip of white material where translation into English appeared sparsley throughout the production. I would have rather preferred no supertitles then the way they seemed to be working. Often the singers went on for minutes, clearly moving through much text only to have the supertitles print the words "I feel the flames in my heart." I suppose it would be a technical headache to constantly be moving quickly through all the dialogue, but the supertitles just seemed tossed together, so I wasn't sure whether I should watch or just let it go. Most of the time I let it go. I was most impressed with the Basilio character, who seemed like some kind of androgynous glam-shaker-priest...his bits were comically and musically most effective to me.

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Thanksgiving had the usual bits mixed with some cool interactions. Like Grandma told the candy story for the first time since the Vasas reunion back in September. I found out my great grandfather was not only a shopkeeper (which I had known), but was a shoemaker, AND had one leg longer than the other because of an accident involving his hip at a factory.

Had deviled eggs. Enjoyed them.

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On Thursday, reuters reported on a strange find in Germany. German police had to arrest a man for driving a California Highway Patrol vehicle while wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform. They were on their way to a sale.

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For Your Consideration wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I was expecting another mockumentary, and this was definitely more of a traditional comedy movie. Not quite traditional by most standards, but the documentary style was gone. I admit, that this from the start put a damper on what I was expecting to be pretty funny. It was quite funny, but not as "rolling along laugh by laugh" as their usual movies. Their attempt to have more of a story seemed to come across as less, because you expect more if it's going to be a traditional movie. Many funny people didn't seem to truly get their chance to shine either, and that was disappointing. As the movie went on I did accept the movie for what it was...a pretty mild but dark commentary on hollywood. So maybe if I see it again I can take it for what it is. I don't know. It reminded me a lot of movies like American Splendor, the Squid and the Whale, and other indies that are more commentary than comedy alone...that little interview above in youtube is cool...so I kinda wanna see it again...give it another shot.

Lansing State Journal Review

Published November 9, 2006

CD review: 'Mike Vasas and the Beasts of Burden,' Mike Vasas and the Beasts of Burden,
MSU student boasts an impressive resume of CD releases

By Chris Rietz | For the Lansing State Journal

The self-titled CD from Mike Vasas and the Beasts of Burden, released earlier this year, is the band's debut - but it caps MSU student Vasas' catalogue of fully 14 releases, five of which are still in print.

You'd think a CD from someone this prolific would be disposable. Don't believe it; in this case, it means Vasas has really learned how to make good records, another skill entirely from performing well and writing good songs. And because of this, "Burden" is a winner, easily transcending any local-yokel category.

Drummer Ryan Malinich and bassist Brian Richard steer the rhythm section; Vasas and fellow Beasts Eric Bredin and Brian Slagle share various combinations of guitar and keyboards. That mix-and-match versatility, a full spectrum of keyboard colors, and especially a thick, overdriven guitar sound give "Burden" a sonic depth few rock-songwriter albums have.

Vasas is a fine singer, and his dense, Dylanesque lyrics are tightly assembled into elegantly crafted songs filled with melodic hooks - and a penchant for the sort of simple musical ideas that can put an already good song over the top (think of the "woo-woo" riff in the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil.")

While there are some straight-ahead rockers here like "New Regime," the album's best songs are rock ballads, fueled with an E Street Band-type reliance on power chords and delicate, even glockenspiel-like keyboard figures. The occasional guitar breaks owe more to the industrial-noise genre than to the usual rock noodling.

"Slavery," like the unearthly "Shells" or "Early Departure," starts out as a conventional ballad but slips into an eerie bridge, then builds into a stratospheric barrage, complete with spinning-out-of-control guitar lines and a harmony chorus.

One wonders if Vasas wants little to do with anything outside of the creative process - the CD package seems oddly obscure and under-informative; the lack of track times virtually assuring it will get little, if any, radio airplay.

This seeming ambivalence, and the Beasts of Burden's relatively light gig schedule, may mean that this CD will come and go with little notice. Don't miss it! "Burden" is one of the finest rock-songwriter albums to emerge this year, from the mid-Michigan area or any other.

Chris Rietz works at Elderly Instruments in Lansing. His reviews appear every other week in What's On. Contact him at crietz-lsj@comcast.net.

Link

nov 2 show loses slagle

Due to an accident/construction/other Dr. Slagle couldn't make it out to the Belmont in Hamtramck last night, so the BOB played as a three-piece supporting my antics, rather than the hoped-for four. The show was successful, but had quite a void as we were missing our fallen hero. Saints and Sinners stands as the track that most suffered due to Slagle's loss, but so did Rescue Team, Shells, and Makeshift. Slagle's solo in New Regime was replaced by pure noise for the duration of the solo, which worked out OK but paled in comparison to the original article.

The Belmont is a nice place. I think their sound is one of the best in the area, along with New Dodge Lounge. Our stage volume was wonderful, I didn't seem to suffer any hearing problems after the show. This is coming from our end of the stage though. Amanda and Vince said that the sound man did a great job in the room too, that everybody sounded clear and distinct on stage, but not excessively loud, which was my only complaint at the New Dodge Lounge. When we played their, the volume of the PA speakers didn't merit the number of people who attended, so it seemed a bit overdone volume wise. But I was told by people visiting the Lounge that things sounded good out on the floor, so both of those places get my seal of approval.

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Protests aided police in rethinking a case where the end result was to accuse a three month old baby of robbery. In India, the three month old robber was exhonerated of any wrong doing and let free to walk the streets searching for more victims of his "cute-crime."

"'How could our little Praveen be named an accused?' said Shakila Devi, the child's mother. Kumar said the boy may have been named by the complainant 'with a malicious intent.'"-taken from Reuters

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And finally today; a weekend post. This weekend Amanda and I will undoubtedly see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The movie comes just weeks after Amanda bought me season two of Da Ali G Show from HBO. ...so we are ready to take it in for it's full effect. Also this weekend, playing at Wells hall @ MSU is Talladega Nights; The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Both comedies will suffice for relaxing after a tough week of classes and a show.

fire started by fireman

"The former head of an elite U.S. Forest Service firefighting team has pleaded guilty to starting a small wildfire in a national forest in northern Arizona, law enforcement authorities said Tuesday." (Reuters)

Wow.

Bob Barker Retires.

Double wow.