Posts tagged “Terrapin Productions”

Here are some photos from Sunday’s most excellent music show at Metronome Coffee, just a few blocks from where I live here in Tacoma! Featuring The Jesus Rehab, Julia Massey and The Five Finger Discount, and Terrapin Productions:

The Jesus Rehab

Julia Massey and the Five Finger Discount

Geoff B Gibbs on Bass

Neighbor Gary Rockstar

Every once in a while Carrie & I look around us and realize, y’know, we’re just a little too old for this. Oftentimes those moments happen courtesy of Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount.

An example: Hempfest. Yeah. We didn’t really feel like we fit in there so much.

Last weekend was our 7th wedding anniversary, but there was way too much going on to do anything about it then. So the weekend before that we decided to celebrate. We learned that JM+FFD was going to be doing a little outdoor festival along with The Jesus Rehab and Terrapin Productions. So that sounded like fun. Only thing: it would be a camping trip.

I don’t camp. I’ve never enjoyed it. I worked hard for my amenities and my comfortable mattress, and I’ve never understood the appeal of roughing it. But Carrie loves it, and we gathered enough comforts (like a tent and a cushy air mattress and a sleeping bag) from camping-oriented friends that I thought I would give it a try.

So we set out for the mountains (with a stop at Scott’s Dairy Freeze in North Bend for lunch—yes, the North Bend where they filmed a bunch of Twin Peaks).

When we got to Roslyn (yes, the Roslyn where they filmed lots of that Northern Exposure TV show), we thought we might walk around for a bit. But it was so frikkin’ hot that we decided just to get back in the air-conditioned car and try to find the venue.

The “festival” was very vaguely organized; we didn’t even learn where it was until the night before. There was a guy at a gate who said that the person running this “festival” was supposed to have provided him with a list of guests, but never did. He just let us in and directed us to drive to another point farther into the forest with basically a “good luck.”

So when the pavement turned to dirt we had to back up a bit until we got cell phone reception and were able to call Julia to get directions the rest of the way. This involved driving past a shirtless man named “Troy” who asked us for our email addresses before giving us directions the rest of the way to an uneven clearing with a wooden stage (still under construction) at one end and an outhouse at the other.

This was about when Carrie & I had that “we’re too old for this” moment.

Fortunately it actually turned out to be quite a bit of fun hanging out with JM+FFD and Jared and Neighbor Gary, even though Carrie & I were practically the only people in attendance who weren’t a member of one of the bands… and a lot of the bands were much more metal \m/ than the bands we usually see. And the camping was actually pretty comfortable. Who knows; I might try it again some time.

The next morning we couldn’t wait to get outta there, though. We had breakfast at the Roslyn Café then headed back home.

Here are some very blurry pictures taken from my phone:

I was just now thinking about the past 12 months and just how many of my good friends released albums. It’s kinda crazy.

Almost a year ago Three Ninjas released his P.Z. Meyers graced EP “Make Sleepstophers.”

You can get a physical CD or download it from iTunes.

Then in September 2009 tangentbot released not one, but two albums! The first was a re-mastered “Cyclops’ Lament,” which was originally created many years ago.

You can download it from Amazon mp3 or from iTunes.

The second tangentbot album was “You Are Used to This Kind of Advertising,” which collected his 40 songs from his “song-a-week” project that he did in 2006.

You can also get this one from Amazon mp3 and iTunes.

Also in September, Terrapin Productions released his first solo album, “Sketches of Perfect Landscapes.”

You can get a physical CD of this album or download it from CD Baby (more download locations are coming, too).

After that was a bit of a lull, but then suddenly within the last month or so was a crazy flurry of action! First came Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount‘s much-anticipated “I’m Not Hollow.”

This is available both as a physical CD and as downloadable mp3s through CD Baby.

Hot off the heels of Julia Massey’s album came Three Ninja’s 2nd full-length LP, “Three Ninjas is Smarter Than a Lettuce” with brilliant cover at by @rabbiddogg.

You can get a physical CD or download it from iTunes. Three Ninjas gets more money if you buy the physical CD, so I recommend that.

Then finally Nathan Geyer’s Locust Street Taxi just released their latest, “Mr. Brown.”

Right now this album is only available as a physical CD, and is mailed out personally directly from the band!

Whew! That’s a whole lot of my friends putting out a whole lot of musics! It’s very inspiring, and I really want to join them before 2010 is out. I have fancy plans, and pants to match. Let’s see if I can do it, eh?

Addendum:
I knew I’d forget something: The Seattle Pro Musica choir put out a Christmas album called “Navidad” featuring J Howard Boyd!

You can order the CD through their website. It’s full of Latin American Christmas songs from the 16th century on up!

One thing you might not know about me is that I don’t listen to a lot of music, by which I mean I tend to focus on a small selection of music and then listen to it over and over and over again.

One of the things I do is I make Mix CDs that I listen to while I’m driving around—to and from work, to and from Fools Play, etc. Thing is, I only make one Mix CD about every three months and that’ll be pretty much all that I’ll listen to until I make another one.

Traditionally I go iTunes and organize my music by most recently added, then start pulling the best songs over to a new playlist as I work my way back in time through my music collection. This way my Mix CDs tend to have a handful of songs that I’ve acquired recently. I also try not to put in too many songs that were in my previous Mix CD. But I don’t add much music to my collection very often, so doing it that way only fills up a portion of the CD. So then I delve into my list of all-time most listenable songs. Y’know, the songs that I don’t really ever get tired of listening to (the playlist that I call “Ultimate Flawless Victory” in iTunes) and toss in a few of those. Then I look at all of the songs in my collection that I’ve given four or five stars and toss in a few of those.

These Mix CDs are both reflective and projective. I try to incorporate how my musical tastes have changed over the past three months while at the same time trying to predict what I’ll want to listen to for the next three months.

Here are the last two CDs I created:

August 2009:

1. Always Been There Anyway – Julia Massey
2. Around the Bend – The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
3. Brain Problem Situation – They Might Be Giants
4. Buddy Holly – Weezer
5. Cellars by Starlight – Kay Hanley
6. Golden Blunders – The Posies
7. Good Fish – Julia Massey
8. Have a F*****g Baby – Three Ninjas
9. Headphones on Your Heart – Leeni
10. House of Mayors – John linnell
11. The Last Thing On Your Mind – Lights
12. Little Fighter X – Fighter X
13. Lollipop – Mika
14. Lovebite – Order of the Crimson Wizard
15. Me + Yr Daughter – Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
16. Over and Over – Leeni
17. Red Underwears – Three Ninjas
18. Say It Ain’t So – Weezer
19. Shut Up and Let Me Go – The Ting Tings
20. Soft Rocked By Me – Jonathan Coulton
21. Somewhere on This Couch – The Crazy Boy Floyds
22. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
23. You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds (featuring Regina Spektor)

November 2009 (there is one repeat song from the August CD—see if you can spot it)

1. Dance, Dance, Dance – Lykke Li
2. Dirt Bike – They Might Be Giants
3. Doll Partz – Order of the Crimson Wizard
4. Heading Out at Dawn – Terrapin Productions
5. Jenny Towner – Julia Massey
6. Los Angeles – They Might Be Giants
7. Mario’s Café – Saint Etienne
8. Powers – Three Ninjas
9. Pride & Strawberry Wine – The Wastelanders
10. A Quiet Room – Tangentbot
11. Secret Skin – Busdriver
12. Spin Around – Josie & The Pussycats
13. Stairs – Locust Street Taxi
14. Starry Eyed Surprise – Oakenfold
15. Stop – Spice Girls
16. Sun Shower – Busdriver
17. Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
18. Theme from “Greatest American Hero” – Joey Scarbury
19. True Affection – The Blow
20. Ugly Girl – Fleming & John
21. Vancouver – They Might Be Giants
22. Veronica – Elvis Costello
23. The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
24. What’s Golden – Jurassic 5
25. Your Love Is a Drug – Puffy AmiYumi

I have no idea what these songs say about me, so feel free to psychoanalyze me to your hearts’ content based solely on the content of these lists. Enjoy!

Link of the Month:
Brizzly
Brizzly is a Twitter interface that does all of the things that Twitter should be doing anyway, like in-lining all linked pictures and videos so that you don’t have to click to a different website just to view them, and showing the full URLs of all links instead of the shortened ones so that you don’t have to click blind and get sent to a potentially dangerous redirect. I use it as my default instead of the actual twitter.com.

Album of the Month:
Terrapin Productions: Sketches of Perfect Landscapes
40-some minutes of good, dreamy, mellow, spacey, noisy, (mostly) instrumental guitar rock. Much layering and echoing and building of atmospheric walls of sound. I like it. It’s groovy.

Game(s) of the Month:
Bloons Tower Defense
A horrifyingly addictive series of games from Ninja Kiwi, the Bloons Tower Defense games are about various types of monkeys trying to pop balloons (“bloons” as they call them). There are 4 of these games released so far, and they get steadily better and better. If you like Tower Defense games, well, then here you go.

Y’all wanna know something cool? I am now a music industry mogul! That’s right, I have helped to release an artist’s first solo album, for reals:

It’s the debut album by Terrapin Productions (the nom de plume of Gary Lappier), Sketches of Perfect Landscapes. It’s some 40 minutes of dreamy, spacey, groovy post-rock goodness. Right now it’s only available as a physical CD, but soon you’ll be able to find it on iTunes and Amazon mp3 and a dozen other music download places.

So now I am officially a music… not “producer.” Producer means something different in the music industry than it does in the movie or TV businesses. I didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the music or the recording process. I’m the guy who helped the artist to actually release his music into the wild. A record distributor? Is that the right term? I dunno; it’s confusing. All I know is that I’m awesome, and so is this album. Go get it NOW!