rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Sherman, Set the Wayback to I Don't Remember

Random thoughts: Ok, either it's reality or it's television. It can't be both. Now there's a grand, sweeping statement (yeah, it tells the world ya ain't got a clue). How's the weather up there? I don't get to ask that question very often 'cause I'm like 6 foot 2 damn tall and people alays ask me that stupid question and Groucho Marx once said that the best way to answer that question was to spit on the guy and tell him it's raining, but has yr weather been as hot as ours? 102damn hot for the last 3 weeks. Or, oh my god, is yr place llike underwater in the flooding? I'm so sorry to be bitching about heat while people's lives float and drown and change irrevocably . From experience all I can say is, it sucks but that's all.

Try to find the good. Apparently that's what makes us human.

Wonder what makes a human torch?

  Feel like I'm living in a bad movie of the week about rural southerners and Hollywood's interpretation  of same as a kind of cartoon gothic opera. Suddenly my already seedy ghetto's been invaded by, and I'm sorry to say this, but ,,,,,,,,, stereotypes.

I myself have sunk to the stereotype of the grumpy old man who yells at the kids to 'turn that shit down' and while it breaks my heart on one level as I suffer not from an irony deficiency but in my defense it usually is shit and it's always too damn loud. And big ol' German Sheperds tied up all barking madness and teethteethteeth. Hank Sr blaring from the car radio at 1 am. Drunken howlings at the moon. A loud .love of life from louts who havn't learned that life is largely levels of loss.

When you choose to look at it that way. I guess.

And guess what? The (legendary) New Jersey barband Tension Envelopes will be reuniting sometime in late December/early January in the rocknroll hotbed of Fowler, Colorado. Ex Paul McKinney Band drummer Paul Costello will be filling in on drums (but not said drummer's shoes) for the late Mike Hegger. Still in the ridiculously early planning stages of this but suffice to say the more it hits me what we're actually going to do, the more twisted and excited this page is gonna be. Expect some type from both Eric Flesch and Speedy Firbank on this one.

Growing old in public.

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:36 | link | comments (14)

Comments:

#1  18 June 2008 - 19:41

 

The Neblungian Visitation has been moved up? Probably not an issue, just first I've heard.

burninglight

#2  19 June 2008 - 01:37

 

Neblung visitation is planned for late
March or early April of 2009. Sorry for any confusion.

Owoomp!

Neblung

Anonymous

#3  19 June 2008 - 13:07

 

at least it's hank sr blaring, and not snoop dogg, or whatever the latest crap i hear blaring from the escalades in my formerly nice little suburban neighborhood.

steel guitar wouldn't vibrate my windows as i lay in bed at night.

larryl

#4  19 June 2008 - 15:00

 

Yo Rick: Long time no speak. I'll probably post an update on my own blog soon -- just have some huge things to resolve first. Suffice to say I already have a title picked out: At the Other Side of the Crossroads (and then some). :)

burninglight

#5  19 June 2008 - 15:00

 

Oh yes, and: Ow-oomp back at you. :)

burninglight

#6  19 June 2008 - 15:03

 

it my neighborhood in the summer it is the loud oompah oompah of salsa music blaring out of car stereos and that deep bass that rattles the windows. and occasionally i find myself grumbling about it and have to stop and remember that i have a tendency to turn it up loud and dance around too . . . and probably always will.

limine

#7  19 June 2008 - 17:23

 

But that's oompah-oompah. This is ow-OOMP. :D

(OK, context for all the non-Envelopes viewing -- we had a really catchy song called "Young Man Should." Eminently danceably yet unmistakably rocking. Anyway, Rick & I used to throw a "ow-oomp" behind each dourly mocking line tim sang, which of course only heightened the sense of fun in counterpoint to the usual lyrics about drug overdoses, lost love, suicide, and all the existential crises you could eat. :D

Case in point:

You've been a bad boy (ow-ooomp)
You've played the game wrong (ow-ooomp)...
Rewrite the program (ow-ooomp)
Just like a young man should (ow-ooomp)
Go do a handstand (ow-ooomp)
Just like a young man should (ow-ooomp)
And you'll be God-damned (ow-ooomp)
Just like a young man should (ow-ooomp)

Anyway, it worked. :D

burninglight

#8  19 June 2008 - 17:35

 

Yeah, that one'll have to make the playlist too. :)

burninglight

#9  19 June 2008 - 19:36

 

Yo Carl,

Know you have a lot going on, but havn't gotten a response to the last
5 or 6 emails I sent you. Did you recieve them? Particularly the best
gigs ever list?

Neblung

Anonymous

#10  19 June 2008 - 20:20

 

Yo again Rick: I got the one you sent me today, but that's the only one I've seen in a couple months. I'm pretty sure I responded to the concert one, because I remember a reference you took yr mom to the R.E.M. concert at the Capitol (although the previous Beacon show is the best concert I'd EVER seen. After that, probably Clash on Broadway, Who at the Capitol, Costello at the Palladium w/ you & Karen (and screaming "Shoot the bass player!" at Squeeze :D), and arguably Slaid Cleaves @ Bodles Opera House in Chester.

burninglight

#11  20 June 2008 - 17:29

 

P.S. and just in case there's still issues: I responded to Rick's e-mail about the potential playlist a couple hours back, and sent it to both of you.

burninglight

#12  25 June 2008 - 18:26

 

Tim here. Coolcoolcool. Burning w/optimism's flame and all that rot. And I've gotten so grumpy that my neighbors could be blasting the 1st Stooges record and I'd find it annoying. I like hiphop, well much of it, well some of it, welll eminem actually.

Best gigs: Patti Smith NYears Eve at the Palladium 77 INTO 78, I think, could be wrong, probably am. Opening acts were John Cale and Television and they ALL had great nights. The Clash show where Simenon smashed the bass for the cover of 'London Calling". PiL at the Beacon where the kids danced onstage. Laurie Anderson at the Beacon. Dylan at the State Fair Pueblo, 2001 and of course those Lou Reed shows at the Bottom Line. Meeeeeemories, sweeeeet meeeeeemories.

But of course the future is now, or rather next year when Tension Envelopes will once more walk the Earth. Work has begun on the NEW album, tentatively titled 'Plastic Machine Music'.





more to come,
tb

Anonymous

#13  25 June 2008 - 18:37

 

PiL at the RITZ was certainly memorable. "Ohhhhhh, yaw not THROWING enough. This is wot we cawl a PASSIVE AAWWWWWWDIENCE." :P

And as far as album title, I'm still voting for White Guys, White Hair. :P

burninglight

#14  27 June 2008 - 17:18

 

HEY!!!! I got like a little grey yahmulke on the back of my head, nothing more. White Guys/White Hair my Aunt Fanny. Playing as Tension Envelopes is a refutation of age!!!! Any one alleges that I'm getting old (except me of course) well, I not only refutes the allegations, I refutes the alligator!!!


(That last bit has been accredited to Al Sharpton. I just think it's a funny line)

Obama/Wright in 08,
tb

timbyrnes

Comments: