Mike Jurewicz’s Blog

June 19th, 2008

Tom Waits

Posted by MikeJurewicz in Music

So Tom Waits started a limited US tour on Tuesday and I am again disappointed that he will not be coming far enough down south.  He hits Jacksonville, FL and Atlanta, GA and would consider going to those but I will be in Pennsylvania on those days.  I would highly recommend anyone in the following areas to go see him if possible.  He is truly one of the greatest American singer/song writers in history.

  • Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - Phoenix, Arizona
  • Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - Phoenix, Arizona
  • Friday, June 20, 2008 - El Paso, Texas
  • Sunday, June 22, 2008 - Houston, Texas
  • Monday, June 23, 2008 - Dallas, Texas
  • Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Thursday, June 26, 2008 - St Louis, Missouri
  • Saturday, June 28, 2008 - Columbus, Ohio
  • Sunday, June 29, 2008 - Knoxville, Tennessee
  • Tuesday, July 1, 2008 - Jacksonville, Florida
  • Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Mobile, Alabama
  • Thursday, July 3, 2008 - Birmingham, Alabama
  • Saturday, July 5, 2008 - Atlanta, Georgia

And for your enjoyment a video of Tom playing Make It Rain back awhile ago on the Letterman show.


June 10th, 2008

Bands on a Plane

Posted by MikeJurewicz in Comedy, Music

I think the title says it all. I’m going to put bands on a plane in this entry. But the big twist is that the plane is doomed. It’s going to crash and this time no Lynyrd Skynyrd or Randy Rhoads are going to be on it. And this is all figuratively and not personal. I have nothing against most of these bands personally, I just can’t stand their music. I don’t wish actual harm upon them.

So now board Flight 666 to 4 acres of concrete.

  • Steve Miller Band - I love classic rock but I absolutely can’t stand this band. It just feels like they are trying so hard to be stoner, experimental rock but just fail miserably. The are the bastard step brothers or Pink Floyd and the Dead. Anytime I hear an opening riff to a song by them I immediately change the channel. I actually almost shot myself in the face when one time I changed the classic rock station I was listening to from a song of theirs to the other classic rock station and got smacked in the head by another Steve Miller song.
  • Styx - Another “classic rock” band and I use that lightly. These guys are the farthest thing from rock that I have seen from that era. I want to blame this band for almost all bubble gum pop that has since come out. Hearing “IIIIIIII’M SAAAAAILING AWAY!” makes me want to take shots of Jack and go on a spree of slashing tired and throwing infants at Palm Tran buses.
  • Korn - While yes I was a fan on them back in my high school days I have grown up and realized just how much this band poisons the earth. These guys must not have gotten the memo that Nu Metal is dead and that we are putting cover letters on all TPS reports. A guitarist left and became a huge Jesus freak. I was hoping he would have drowned in that river he got baptized in. The drummer left and they truck on. The get a new drummer and a new guitarist but they don’t even allow the guitarist to stand on stage with them during shows!!?? How egotistical do you have to be? Not giving up is usually a good trait but I have never begged so much for someone to please, please quit.
  • ICP - Not really a band because you have to play instruments to be called one but nonetheless. They rap about nonsense that of course teens with nothing better to do can relate to and give them a reason to paint their faces and drink high sugared soft drinks. And when they aren’t making a mockery of hip hop they are shitting on pro wrestling by stepping foot in rings and even starting their own promotion. I watched a video of Jim Cornette rip them new ones when they interrupted an interview he was giving and it was great. And while I’m at it I would like to put the silly hatchet guy logo on the plane too. I know you can’t really kill a logo but I would love nothing more than to not have to see some fucking girl at a gas station or grocery store with that damn thing tattooed on their tit or arm of forehead.
  • Almost all quasi hardcore/metalcore/emo bands - That shit got so ridiculously out of control. You had a new flavor of the week band popping up every….well week. Lots of these bands were filled with kids who couldn’t have been playing a guitar more than 6 months and jumped straight to dropped tunings before ever attempting to play in standard. Add this with horrible song structure including overdone breakdowns that seem to last a fortnight and “crucial” sing alongs. I’m also going to add in wearing skin tight girl jeans, which is okay if you have a vagina, and wearing make up, which again is okay if you have a vagina. Hey thanks for ruining heavy music and making it impossible to find a group of people that want to play good heavy music and not care about success or image. Good job guys!
  • Disturbed - I always find it funny when people making fun of screaming for not being able to understand them when the lead singer of Disturbed just straight up says things that are not words at all. His rapping monkey vocals make me continually think we are de-evolving and are that much closer to making Mike Judge’s movie Idiocracy become real life. These guys took nu metal and mixed it with leather pants and studs of the hair metal days and added dumb looking labret piercings to top it off. He needs to either sign a promissory note that he will never sing again or needs to have his lips pierced shut.
  • Bob Rock - Technically known more as a producer but is a musician. Rock’s claim to fame is producing all Metallica albums from the Black Album up to St. Anger, he also played bass on the last album. Anyone that knows Metallica knows those were the worst albums for the band. Metallica lost their edge and some absolutely shitty songs came out of their sessions with Rock. I mean they wrote a sequel to a song for fuck’s sake. While yes Lars was probably a douche before he met Rock, Rock single handedly brought one of the best metal bands of the time to their knees and turned them into a warehouse for singles and less than stellar musicianship.
  • Godsmack - These guys not only play absolutely horrid music but Sully is possibly the biggest egomaniac on the earth. I think he truly believes he is a rock god. I read an interview with him a year or two ago where the person conducting the interview just ripped into Sully. He called him a hypocrite for his views on the war and the troops. He continually trips over his own words and keeps digging himself deeper. His treatment of CKY while on tour with the Deftones was grade A dick. And when I heard their cover of Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” I wished that I had cancer in a bottle to spray on every person in might before turning it on myself. You can read the interview by going here.

Well that’s it for this piece hope you got a good laugh. I definitely did and a little angry. I hope I don’t see any babies today.

May 29th, 2008

Podcast

Posted by MikeJurewicz in Music, Podcast

So I decided to make a second post today.  One on a bit of a brighter note than the last.

I recently started thinking back to an old dream of mine to be a radio DJ.  It just always came across as a career that I would really like to do because of my love for music.  But unfortunately modern radio is just utter crap.  DJs have little to no control over what is played on the airwaves and most just come across as complete tools that have the station manager’s hand up their ass like a little puppet.  And I have absolutely zero intentions on playing the latest cut from the Red Jumpsuit Apparashit whatever the fuck they are so working in a normal radio station just seems out of the question.  So I came up with an idea, I could make my own weekly podcast where I would play music that I want to play and talk about music that matters to me.

I brought the idea up to my friend Wurm who does a lot of work with websites and just overall online technology and he seemed thrilled to here me say that because he was thinking of the same thing.  So he has started looking for some good programs to do the recording and hopefully in a few weeks we will have our first musical podcast.  We haven’t decided on a name or how long each episode will be but I can tell you that there will be no musical format other than just stuff that we like and think you would like or think that you should give your time to listen to.  So you will hear anything from rock to indie to instrumental to punk to hip hop to whatever.  If we like it and think it rocks we will play it.

Once I have more information for you I will sure to let you know.  In the meantime get ready.

March 13th, 2008

Musical Drive

Posted by MikeJurewicz in Music

For the past few months my drive to create music has dwindled.  Mostly because I have been working so much that when I come home I don’t want to do much other than have dinner and lay down.  Then my weekends I try to spend time with my friends and do packing.  Plus I still have that bad taste in my mouth about the back stabbing I received from the trend following misfits of life in my last band.

But the past week or so I have wanted to start writing again.  I’ve downloaded a couple of drum machine programs to my laptop and started grabbed my guitar and started playing to the beats.  I have this vision for writing and it will probably never pan out the way I want it to but I at least will try to get as close as possible to it.

I recently came up with an idea for a song.  A song with meaning without words.  I’m glad that when I threw this idea by Lane that he was more than happy to want to be involved.  He may not be the most technically sound musician but at least he has the drive and he knows where my heart is when writing this.  I love him for that.  I hope to get together with him to compose something.  I’m not expecting anything mind blowing out of the two of us but rather just something straight forward and from the heart.  This is becoming my number one goal to accomplish before the end of April.  I want to write this song and I want to play it for my friends.

I think there are two big reasons for this renewed interest in writing.  One is the music I have been listening to lately.  I find it so inspiring and so beautiful.  I finally see that words are not necessary in order to portray beauty, pain, happines, sadness and all those other emotions.  An entire Godspeed You! Black Emperor album can put forward all those emotions without a single word being sung.  Sure there are bands and artists out there that write wonderfully constructed lyrics that not only tug at your heart but make you think and wonder but you can’t always relate to everything they say.  Without the words it is far more open to interruption.  You can always understand in your own mind.  When there is a sad part playing you definitely know what it feel like to be sad and you can apply its feeling to anytime you were sad.  I may not make sense but I love the way that instrumental music makes me feel.

The second reason for the revival in my music endeavor is just how I have felt lately.  I’m a nostalgic person and I always look back on the past.  I miss the things that brought me happiness.  I regret the things I did that hurt those I care about (Yes I have regrets and I think everyone does.  Some just can’t admit to it).  I hate the things that have always bothered me.  I’m scared of my departure.  It’s just a rush of emotion hitting me all so at the same time and how better to let it out then by playing music?  I can’t get these thoughts out of my head nor do I want to get them out of my head because they are who I am.  I’m a mess I know, a fool probably, a lover most definitely, a friend, a son, a brother, a companion, a shoulder to cry on, the one crying on a shoulder, a dreamer, a loon, a hermit, a loud mouth, a drunk, a level head, etc.  So many things that make up who I am and how I feel.  Some good, some bad but all of them what makes me…me.  Sure I have spent countless hours of my days thinking about how much I love someone that I don’t have.  I don’t care, that’s me.  And all these emotions that make up me have driven me to begin writing again.  So that I can put how I feel out in music.  Yes there will still be times that I drown my sorrows in a beer or ten but I’m glad I still have my ability to write music.

Maybe I’ll play in a band again, more than likely I won’t.  I can’t stand the idea of someone taking my emotion output from me and making a mockery of it to be popular or be rich.  I’m perfectly content with writing music with my friends just to write music.

February 1st, 2008

2008 Album of the Year

Posted by MikeJurewicz in Music

It is only February 1st and I believe I have found the album of the year in my opinion already. I haven’t been blown away by anything new in awhile. The last time I can recall being absolutely floored by something was probably when I first listened to Botch or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As I’ve said to some friends lately I have been dying for something to give me this type of feeling again. I’ve lost so much faith in music. Most of the bands I really like have either gone in different directions that I don’t really like or they are broken up. Yes there are still some bands I like that are putting out quality stuff but nothing that I think I will put down as one of the best of all time.

Today I experienced it again. This Will Destroy You is a quartet from Texas who’s band name is extremely deceiving of the musical style they choose. They put out their debut EP in 2006 entitled Young Mountain through independent label Magic Bullet Records. It was a beautiful, flowing album that included your traditional instrument pieces along with piano, digital drum beats and other ambient noises. The parts that use some electronic elements reminded me a lot of Mogwai’s experimental aspects. Ever since hearing the EP I have been awaiting a full length to see if they continue down that direction. This past Tuesday they released their first full length simply entitled This Will Destroy You again through Magic Bullet Records. The very start of the album is quite with very light guitars mixed with some electronic effects. This album didn’t exactly take the direction that I would have thought but this was very pleasant surprise. Instead the songs are more epic and climatic. With many rises and falls in the song progressions including longer interludes of near nothing ambiance. I was reminded of that first time I listened to GY!BE again. This is an album I am going to be listening to a lot and probably for a long time. It is perfect for when you’re driving or even after a hard day. It will calm you and put you in a better state of mind.

For more information on This Will Destroy You please visit their Myspace profile.