I AM THE BLOGSTER

Preproduction Day 2

2012-01-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

Day 2 has come and gone and we got some serious work done. We started right where we left off, with 'Legend' and like we thought it needs a serious overhaul. Some of Travis' critiques included, "this song has no repeating parts, this isn't classical music" and "any other band these 3 riffs would create an entire song." Sooooo between now and our next preproduction date, February 19, we have to rework that bad boy which hopefully shouldn't be too tough since it has 16 different parts, haha.

Moving on we started to work on our newest song that is currently untitled which went over much better. We have one rhythm part to tweak and make more aggressive but this will definitely be the heavy hitter on the record. Vocals between Molly and Cody need some more work on lining up so they can compliment each other better. Travis suggested that we go through songs part-by-part and decide who has the dominant role and restructure the other to be more complimentary.

We also had a genius idea on a concept for our first music video which started off by Nolan telling Jacob that he should use pretzel sticks to replace drum sticks. From there it involved into an entire music video where food replaces all of our instruments. Starting off with Jacob's kit; pizza for cymbals, a punch bowl for a snare, pumpkin as a bass drum, and a different variety of larger fruits for toms like watermelons and such. Drumstick evolved into licorice ropes, the 3 ft. kind. The guitars will be the big party subs from Subway and Nolan's bass will be a bass, yes the fish. Amps will be gigantic cakes and finishing with the vocalists, Molly requested a blue raspberry snow cone and Cody a corn dog.

Next time we are working on 'Depths' and hopefully a reworked version of 'Legend' which leaves us with some lose ends and one more song for our final day of preproduction on February 26. And I leave you with the quote from Jacob and Travis. Travis: "I can't adjust the kick drum because it's not on click." Jacob: "That sounds like your problem"

-Brian
I AM THE MONSTER

Preproduction Day 1 (Retro Diary)

2012-01-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Hello all! We haven't used this blog for anything worth while lately and came up with the idea to blog about our studio time a little late so our first installment will be travelling into the past from the future. That's right, the future. I will be writing this as if we are in the studio right now but in actuality we aren't, mind blowing, I know. I don't know why it matters if it's a week later but go with it. Here we goooooooooo

Well people the time is finally here where we make our first legit record and we couldn't be any more stoked. In January and February we will be spending time in preproduction going over our songs with the finest of fine tooth combs and spending 10 days at the tail end of March laying down the nitty gritty. All in all we are coming out with a 5 song EP (yet to be titled) with a planned release of June-ish. It'll consist of 4 new songs and Depths a bit tweaked and reworked. Get pumped.

Anyways here we are! Day uno of prepro with Sir Travis Noble of Magnus & Noble studios (not his places real name but his cats name is Magnus so I dubbed it that) most of the day is spent just getting us acclimated to what we are going to be doing, what we want to work on and accomplish. We started out working on Tempt Not A Desperate Man, overall its a fairly melodic song with a bunch of vocal driven parts but still has a couple rude boys in there for riffs. Did a ton of guitar work on the song, changed some fills, don't think we changed too much on vocals. For the most part it's all done now, bunch of little tweaks that overall makes the song a hell of a lot better.

That's all for day 1. We recorded our next song Legend that we plan on tweaking next week, that song has a ton of parts so we will so how that goes. Hopefully we will keep this baby steadily updated as we go through the process of making this record. Next studio date is Jan 29th (yes I know that's today but remember I'm writing this retro-actively) so we will catch ya then!

-Brian
I AM THE MONSTER

Weekly Word-Rives

2011-07-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the Weekly Word. This week we are taking a look at another poet. His name? Rives. Simply, Rives. Just one name, like all the women on Brazil's world cup team (who lost in spectacular fashion to AMERICA). Anyway. You may recognize his shaved head from a TED conference where he spit a couple poems and did a quick wrap-up of the conference, or perhaps you saw his TED talk on 3 A.M. where he revealed to us the conspiracy behind that dark hour of the night.

For your viewing pleasure today, I present to you two poems, both from Rives' appearance on Def Poetry Jam.

The first poem is called “Sign Language”. Rives is fluent in sign language, as well as a couple other languages, and in this poem, he tells us about hosting Deaf Poetry Jams for deaf high schoolers. Very very cool and funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbtVepS53t0

Our second poem for today is called, “Kite”. This poem tells the story of the morning after meeting a great girl. Very funny and loving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZsmneEtdWU&feature=related

To top things off, I present you Rives' page, http://www.shopliftwindchimes.com , which is one of the coolest names for a website ever. Two hints: 1: check out his pop-up books for children, 2: there is a treasure hunt embedded in his website which leads to some easter eggs. Enjoy!

Have a suggestion? Let us know. Check out our facebook at facebook.com/IAmTheMonster

Coming up next week: An introduction to TED.com

I Am The Monster's southern crawfish and sausage jambalaya

2011-07-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of you are living of Ramen noodles and Little Ceasars 5$ pizza's. but fear no more. today we're going to show you how to make a down south dish that wont break your already empty bank accounts!

Jambalaya is a traditional southern dish that usually consists of three parts; meat, vegetables and rice.
i picked up some Zatarans Jambalaya mix from my local safeway. 2 boxes to be exact. Then i headed to the local creek and threw out my crawfish trap i purchased at Bi-mart for about $8. i baited it with some leftover salmon meat i had in the freezer. after letting the trap soak overnight i pulled in about 20 crawdaddies. I put them in a bucket and headed home.

Once home, i chopped green pepper,corn,red pepper,onion and one jalapeno. After blasting the crawfish for a couple minutes with the garden hose i boiled a stockpot of water and cooked them for about 5 minutes. Then peeled them and got some decent tail and claw meat. Next i chopped up some andouille chicken sausage.

Cook the zatarans jambo mix according to their instructions. Once finished add all your prepared veggies and meats and let it simmer with a lid on so you dont lose all your moisture for about 15minutes stirring occasionally.

We topped ours with some cheddar jalapeno cornbread, no big deal.

Youre now ready to get to gettin, cause this dish is hittin!

Contest Details!!

2011-07-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, Molly J. here! First off, sorry for the delay but I am delighted to inform you that all systems are now a go! I Am The Monster has decided to set up a Monst-test for you all so that you can score some free monster merch! The contest entails doing a cover of one of the songs on our facebook. This can be any kind of cover: guitar, drum, vocals, tuba (as someone had already inquired about), banjo....you name it! Make a video or recording of your cover, post it on youtube and send us the link. We will be reviewing your cover as a band and picking out our top favorites that will receive free merch. If you are doing a vocal cover and can't do the clean vocals or vice versa...get creative with it! You don't have to be a prodigy for us to like it...we want you to have fun with it! If you have any questions about anything you may contact us via facebook, individually or as a band and we will help you as best as we can. Also, here are the lyrics for both Edge Of The World and Depths. I made lyric videos as well (which are also on our youtube) if that makes it easier. We will look forward to seeing what you pull together! Good luck!

Edge Of The World

I swear I've been here before.
Can you hear the words I speak?
I'm on the edge of the world.
You've fallen from the light again.
And I know we've come so far.
But will you ever get back home?

For you, I fight and follow blindly.
We will take misfortune, in it's wake.
For you, I fight and follow blindly.
We will crawl on our bruised and broken hands.
For you, I fight and follow blindly.
We will crawl on our, on our bruised and our broken hands.

The writing on the walls.
Can you hear the words I speak?
It's all too real.
You've fallen from the light again.
It's made by sheltered minds.
But will you ever get back home?

Let loose the wolves

The ocean crashes.
Can you hear the words I speak?
The fear is here.
You've fallen from the light again.
And every bone is broken.
But will you ever get back home?

The ocean crashes and every bone is broken. The fear is here, it always has been.
So scream these words: set me free.

Days turn into decades, but you still haven't found a way to escape. And I recall the day when I tried to patch your pain with faith and you walked away. Can you tell me where you're going the compass is unclear, the path that you're taking is wrong but with time you'll know. Just pull it together, it's time we forget this and go.

I'm never looking back, I'm never coming home. Take your abandonment, there's no room for it here.
Just remember where we came from, there's a glimmer from the past.
We won't stay down, our march will shake the ground. This is our time to shine, this is our revolution.
Just remember where we came from and you can finally
Set me free.
Someone set me free.

Depths

Gambler, I'm calling your bluff. Lay down your hand, you're not fooling anyone.
Watch your step. Your only weakness is that you have no destination and no will
but to live to kill our dreams. But we will stand strong and we will fight.

We won't hold our breathe.
(Save the sinking ship...)
We'll fight the water into the depths.
(into the depths)

Watch your tongue, you will be found. Watch your tongue, if it's the last thing that I do.

The siren has sang it's song. Save the sinking ship.
The anchor will bring us down, keep your head above water.

(The revelation of who we are...)
Don't burn all your bridges or you'll fall to the water below.
But I can't help but set them ablaze with the fire in my bones.

We'll make it out by the skin of our teeth.
We'll make it out by the skin of our teeth.
You have nothing but your glory to blame.
You have nothing but your glory to blame.

Yell fire fire, this is not a test. Shake it off, pull yourself together.
I'm not a monster, I'm just a simple man. (I'm not a monster)
I'm not a monster.

And we won't hold our breath.
(save the sinking ship)
We'll fight the water into the depths.
(...into the depths.)

Even you juggernaut, even you couldn't stop the power of this freight train.

GEORGE WATSKY-WEEKLY WORD

2011-07-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

This week's weekly word is on a little man named George Watsky. He is a slam-poet/rapper who's on the rise in the world of words. He got his start as part of a slam-poetry teen team who won the nation slam-poetry tournament.

After gaining some popularity among spoken worders, he performed the poem “V for Virgins” on Def Poetry Jam (hosted by Mos Def). “V for Virgins” is a poem which reclaims the sexyness and awesomeness of the high school virgin who would rather play D&D with his boys. I personally connect with the line, “Damn that's some sexy peach-fuzz sexy” as I cannot grow any sort of facial hair (nor can Mr. Cody Iremonger). Another poem, titled “Drunk Text Message to God”, is equally hilarious, but also has a serious side of acceptance and understanding.

Since making name for himself in the poetry realm, George Watsky has since began making a name for himself in the hip-hop world. You may have been one of the nearly eleven million viewers of his youtube video hit “Pale Kid Raps Fast”, in which he raps fast over Busta Rhymes “Break Your Neck”. He has an album coming out soon and posts a new song from the album every Monday until the album comes out. So check out the white kid reclaiming hip-hop and spoken-word poetry.

Links:
George Watsky home page: http://georgewatsky.com/
Watsky youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/gwatsky
“V for Virgins”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=212iH9jckT8
“Drunk Text Message to God”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uOhD67028I
“Pale Kid Raps Fast”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XLswqiX0s

Weekly Word

2011-06-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

Oh hi! Grab a seat right there on that bean-bag, or perhaps the stool, or would you like a pillow? Great, now that we're all comfortable, it's time for THE WEEKLY WORD.

WARNING: the purpose of poetry is to make you feel, so you may feel a emotion or to, but it's NORMAL, DO NOT PANIC.

This weeks word is an amalgam of superduper sick poetry.

Up first: William Carlos Williams poem, “This is Just to Say”

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Next, we swoon to e.e. cummings love poem, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in”. You may also recognize the poem from the book Tuesday With Morrie by Mitch Albom when a woman recites it at his celebration of life, before he died.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Lastly, I leave you with the sad, slightly weird, villanelle by Dylan Thomas about his father dying called, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. Please notice the repeated refrain, “Do not go gentle into that good night/rage, rage against the dying of the light” and how the meaning of each line changes every time it's repeated, especially in the end when the two join back up as a couplet.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

HOMEWORK: Post at least two lines of poetry of a friends wall.

Until next time lovers.

DiGiorno Supreme Pizza vs. DiGiorno Ultimate Toppings Supreme Pizza

2011-06-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

One night Nolan and I headed to our nearest Safeway for a late night dinner generated by a grueling band practice. The plan was perfect, split a sixer of delicious beers and decimate our hunger with the only thing we knew that could, DiGiorno pizza. We each grabbed a DiGiorno Supreme (yes a whole one for each of us, leftovers the next day duhhhhh) but then something caught my eye. A DiGiorno pizza in a new box that claimed to have 25% more toppings. Yes you may have seen it or heard its name whispered on the streets but for me it was a first. Instantly my curiosity was peaked although I remained more than skeptical. The price of the pie was only a mere dollar more, but can you really trust what the box claims. Only a fraction increase with an added quarter of the toppings!? It's madness! Nolan and I decided that we had to investigate for the masses, for you the people. In this tight economy buyers must remain informed about their frozen pizza selection and cannot be falling into the advertising games and gimmicks played by corporate America. So follow along for a side-by-side comparison and consider yourself informed!

Here to the left is the regular DiGornio Supreme pizza with an adequate amount of toppings. There isn't much real estate that is left uncovered leaving little to complain about.

Now to the right is the DiGiorno Ultimate Topping Supreme Pizza and those toppings are piled high! This pie varies by removing the olives and substituting red peppers, a far more favorable topping in my opinion. The sausages alone look like they have been bulked up on steroids and 25% more might be on the shy side. If the toppings were spread out evenly it would be easier to see that no sliver of cheese would be uncovered.

And then the classic side-by-side shot

Alright friends, there you have it. The behemoth Ultimate Topping wins the battle and for the extra change that you could scrounge up on the floor of your car, Nolan and I concur, it's a no brainer!

Weekly Word

2011-06-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

This weeks word goes out to Mr. Stephen King. Sure, we've all seen IT, or Misery or The Shining. And they are good, don't get me wrong. But, what you may not know, is that King earned his teaching license and taught for a short stint. Couple other fun facts, he got hit by a car, struggled with drugs and alcohol, and (the reason for this week's word), he also wrote a serious, book of literature called Different Seasons, which is made up of four novellas.

This collection is made of up of four novellas titled, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body and The Breathing Method. As you can guess, the first novella was made into the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Apt Pupil is also a movie bearing the same title, and The Body was made into a great movie which we all know and love called, Stand By Me.

So, if you liked any of those movies, please go pick up the collection called Different Seasons and enjoy them again, but with richer detail. And remember, novellas are short novels, typically about a hundred pages at most, so they are quick and easy reads. Enjoy!

As always, please suggest anything that has to do with writing or reading to be discussed in the Weekly Word at facebook.com/IAmTheMonsterMusic

Weekly Word-6/14

2011-06-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Hello readers and movers and shakers,

This weeks Weekly Word is about a little band from Michigan called La Dispute. If you know me, you know I love the La. They've released 5 EPs/Splits and 2 LPs, entitled Vancouver (their 1st) and Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River Between Vega And Altair. Both are very good (check out Future Wars from Vancouver and Newer Storms For Older Lovers from SATBOFTRBVAA for a taste of their sound)

That being said, THIS word is going to draw attention to their unsung EPs (extra credit for the person who names that band reference) entitle Here, Hear I, II and III. All of these EPs have four songs a piece, aptly titled one-twelve, and all feature spoken word poetry over some form of music, with the first two EPs all being vocal covers and III being original poems. The music brilliantly changes based upon the content of the poem, for example, the music for track Three, which is a vocal cover of Edgar Allan Poe's poem Annabell, the music feature a piano and light drumming, perfectly accenting the themes of the poem.

Contrasting starkly is track Five, which is a vocal conglomeration of three Charles Bukowski poems. Jordan Dryer (La Dispute's sole singer) mixes in spoken word poetry and singing as well as slight screaming. Underneath this amalgam is a smooth jazz-based song. Piano, guitar, bass, trumpets, tambourine all make an appearance in the track.

That concludes our first weekly word. Please, suggest anything from books, poetry, music, movies, essay, etc. to be discussed and shared.

Your homework for this week is to go to http://ladisputemusic.com/lyrics_stream.html and memorize two lines to repeat to someone by next Wednesday (also, all their songs can be streamed for free from that site)

VOCALIST ANNOUNCEMENT

2011-05-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

I AM THE MONSTER would like to announce the addition of two members to the band. Starting off we would like to welcome back our former vocalist Cody Iremonger (and actually pretend like he never left…) In addition we have also added Molly Jordan who will add singing and another level of screaming. With this change the original members (Jacob - drums, Nolan - bass, Bryan - guitar, Brian - guitar) believe that the dynamic level of talent that the two bring can and will openly expand what we can do as a whole. Having Cody back and bringing in Molly has effectively breathed new life into I AM THE MONSTER and we are certain that it will open up creative avenues that were not possible before. This weekend we will be rerecording vocals over two tracks that were released off our 2010 EP 'Scream These Words.' (With a full EP release slated for winter) These two songs will be offered as free downloads for you to get reacquainted with us as well as for you to share. We cannot wait to show you what we have been working so hard on and we hope you enjoy them as much as we did creating.

Thank you,
-I AM THE MONSTER