Ambien + Paxil=Increased Risk of Suicide July 10th, 2009 Within a month of returning home from Iraq early last year, I started noticing some behavoral changes that I hadn’t experienced before. My anger and temper towards trivial situations bordered on abuse of my loved ones. I realized rather early that I need to get some help before I ended up hurting some one close to me. The Army’s answer was to at first deny the problem and then band aid it with meds. Within two months of seeing a counselor I was on a daily regimen of Wellbutrin and Paxil for Depression, Trazadone for the nightmares, Ambien for insomnia, Seroquil for schizophrenia, and then muscle relaxers for back and neck pain. No doubt in part to the large amount of prescription pills I was taking on a daily basis I experienced severe thoughts of suicide and nearly succeeded in taking my life from an overdose of Ambien and alcohol. For the past 6 months I’ve been able to conquer the withdrawal from the Paxil, which was a horrible experience in itself. You can imagine my chagrin when I found this article today. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1811858,00.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arvo Part July 4th, 2009 Recently, I discovered the Estonian composer, Arvo Part, through the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood. He wrote Fratres for Cello and Piano which you can hear in the movie as well as the trailer. What immediately struck me was the almost frenzied arpeggios that are played on cello till the piano enters with a simple chord in the lower octaves a minute or so later. It sounded all so deceptively simple and clever. I picked up a release on the Naxos label titled A Portrait: Arvo Part yesterday at Waterloo Records here in Austin. It’s more of a survey of his work from the early 1960s through the present. His earliest work ran the gamut of Schoenburg’s serialism through neo-romantism ala Sibelius. However, it’s his work from the mid 1970s onward that I find most interesting. Check out Fur Alina, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, or Magnifacat. All three pieces herald back to a time closer to the music Pre-Baroque. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just Temperament June 29th, 2009 La Monte Young isn’t a composer who gets a lot of credit these days. However, he essentially started the minimalist movement in the early 1960s. His group, the Theatre of Eternal Music, included both John Cale of Velvet Underground fame and fellow minimalist Terry Riley. In addition to his avant-garde compositions, Young also experimented with just tuning. Heard more often in Indian music, just tuning uses number ratios as opposed to equal temperament, which uses multiples of the same interval. For the past five hundred years, Western music has been based upon equal temperament tuning with its 12 notes due in part to expediency and the fact that very few instruments in the 1600s could accomodate just tuning. Although it sounds “slighty off,” just tuning is a more “mathematically” correct tuning with well over 42 possible notes within the scale. Here’s a piece, Young performed with his band The Forever Bad Blues Band using just tuning. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recent review by UK blog, A New Band A Day... June 27th, 2009 “Today's New Band. Their name is Frantic Clam. Some of you will like the name, some will think it stinks and most will hopefully be too busy listening to their great, driving, songs to care.  Fort Worthless hammers a steady beat - the kind where our human, subconscious need for steering-wheel-drumming bubbles to the surface and the band carefully construct a web of choppy guitars, chipper lyrics and handclaps-a-plenty around it. It's a pop song of sorts, subscribing to the age old pop values - use a good tune, a catchy chorus, and loads of hooks. It works, and it's the kind of song that will make a difference to the band's life. Korean Beauty Queen is another chugging, sparse-then-noisy-then-sparse-again angular art-rock jab to the ribs, arriving quickly in a screech of its own importance and disappearing just as rapidly. Frantic Clam say that they 'sound like tinnitus'. I think any sufferers would be happy to swap that internal broken radio buzz for Frantic Clam's off-kilter swagger." 2009 by ANewBandADay.com. All rights reserved ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Stravinsky to Sasha Grey June 26th, 2009 Finished a new demo today tentatively titled “Sasha Grey.” Yes, it’s named after the porn star not that I’m particularly a fan of her work. I like the name though. It reminds me of one of my favorite books by Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Grey.” This past week I’ve spent my time rediscovering twentieth century composers like Morton Feldman, Olivier Messian, and John Cage. I picked up a copy of Alex Ross’s book: “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.” I highly recommend it if you’re even slightly interested in how we got from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. http://viva-radio.com/http://blog.viva-radio.com/Post.aspx?p=916http://blog.viva-radio.com/Post.aspx?p=916http://www.franticclam.comhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Frantic-Clam/41498887781shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4
Upcoming Shows: Thursday July 23rd, 2009 // 10PM Flamingo Cantina Austin, TX Saturday July 25th, 2009 // 9PM Creekside Lounge Austin, TX Friday July 31st, 2009 // 11PM Trophy’s Austin, TX Tuesday August 11th, 2009 // 11PM Beauty Bar Austin, TX Thursday August 20th, 2009 // 12PM Beerland Austin, TX
Contact Us: Management: Tyler Groover tyler@twogroove.com Record Label: Exemplary Records Harold King info@exemplaryrecords.com www.exemplaryrecords.com mailto:tyler@twogroove.comshapeimage_3_link_0

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