I’m taking this blog in a new direction, first it was intended to plan a cross-America journey that didn’t happen/might not ever happen, then it became a medium for me to post food I made and other un-interesting shit in my life, then at the end it just sort of turned into a LiveJournal. Pretty embarassing, but whatever. This blog is now mostly going to focus on the Mountain Goats. If you’re reading this and are a friend of mine, you probably know that they’re my favourite band. Unless you like this band you’ll probably find it pretty boring. I’ll mostly be talking about records, shows and live archived sets that I have. I’m sure I’ll talk about other things too, but the main focus will be the Mountain Goats. I’m biting someone’s style here, I think.

I might as well start with something relating to the name of my blog, the song/single See America Right. I chose to name this blog Jason See’s America Right because I intended on taking a cross-country trip with my friend Andrew (read back to the first couple pages for more of that).

This is a song from Tallahassee and in my opinion it’s not really a stand-out track on the album. The only way it stands out amongst the other tracks on the album is that it’s one of two tracks that has any sort of heavy drum presence or distorted guitar. It also has with the very slight lo-fi effect on the vocals, which actually works well and blends the progessing style of John with the old Panasonic boombox John.

For some reason, 4AD decided to release a single of this record, the Mountain Goats’ second release on the label  –

- the b-side of which is one of my favourite tMG jams, New Chevrolet in Flames. Okay so my list of favourite TMG songs is not short by any means but it’s an awesome song. See America Right stands out in an odd way on Tallahassee but it’s coupled nicely with New Chevrolet in Flames. I picked up this single a couple months ago while in Toronto with my friend Mike, killing time at Sonic Boom before we saw Annie Hall. I’m sure it’s not that rare of a record by any means but it is out of print and finding a single that’s more than a couple years old in a record store was exciting. This record contains nothing on the matrix, except Jomont bummer. Dear John Darnielle, please start putting inscriptions on record matrixes.

Some more exciting tMG news coming up soon, The Life of the World To Come is out on Tuesday, they’re playing the Colbert Report the same night and hopefully sometime in the near future my copy of Devil in the Shortwave will come in the mail.

My priorities probably aren’t in the right place, I don’t care. I got a written warning at work tonight about my attendance. I think people who I don’t want to read this do and people who I want to read it don’t. I’m thinking of making a big, stupid decision, you’re only young and dumb once. I’m content with at least one thing in my life right now. The perfect album to accompany this night of overthinking and hating where I am in life:

If you can set the pace I can use the change. let me know when you want to go.

The last week and a half has taken me to Chicago and New York, both were great, it’s depressing coming back to this city. It’s depressing going back to my job. My gameplan involves a city far away, dogs, pizza and getting hit by a car.

This weekend made me realize that I’ve got the best best friend. He’ll enjoy that video, you might get it, probably not. I went out to Derrick’s on Friday night and he made a shitty night into a great one. I picked him up down the street from his house and he had bought me a 2litre bottle of Dr Pepper (some of which I spilled on his floor later in a drunken rage.) I like that we can hold conversation for hours and the time just sort of melts by, you rule dude.

I saw Michael Gira play on Saturday night, what an incredible man. He’s definitely not the greatest musician but he’s got a haunting voice and heavy lyrics, I only wish he’d have played something off of the Burning World. He talked of a new Swans/Angels of Light album being recorded soon and the songs he played that he said were going to be on there were great. There’s one that’s stuck in my head that I can’t wait to actually hear a recorded version of. I went to the show with Mike, another person I’m proud to call one of my best friends and I’m really glad he came along with me and then came to Urban Blight with me when I moshed my thumb into oblivion.

I finally picked up the typewriter again yesterday after a long disconnect from it. I’m nearly caught up with the recipes, I need to type 4 more I think then I’m still waiting on one or two more then I’ll be ready to put that shit together. It’s been sort of a long time coming and I’ll be excited/glad when it’s finally done. If you’re reading this and haven’t sent me something but have something worth sending, let me know. Right now I’m looking for a couple more breakfast things and a couple of barbecue things (not necessarily things you’d grill, but things you’d have at a barbecue).

On the subject of food (my favourite behind Black Sabbath, John Darnielle and slurpees) there’s a vegan potluck on Wednesday at the Sweat Lodge. It’s going to be the last get together before the house gets sucked into hell so come out, bring food, eat and have fun. Afterwards there’s a show going on at the Grist Mill in Waterloo, bike your full asses down there, it’s not that far. Don’t sleep on Bridge and Tunnel, I did for far too long (literally and figuratively, I chose the Office and sleeping instead of seeing them the first night I was in Gainesville last year) and completely regret it.

Also a similar show is happening the night before in St. Catherines, there isn’t a flyer anywhere but it’s Bridge and Tunnel, Orphan Choir, Wayfarer and Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (seriously, better than your favourite band (unless your favourite band is Black Sabbath)). I’m looking forward to that show a lot because it’s been too long since I’ve seen MWML.

That’s all, Internet.  I bought Slowly We Rot on break tonight, probably paid too much but I don’t care. I should probably be preparing stuff for the potluck but I’m too tired. Disregard females, acquire records.

Been a while since one of these. I’m out the door soon to go to band practice but I was up early today and spent most of the afternoon listening to records. My record player had been out of commission since I rearranged my room but I shuffled some more things around last night, cleared all the shit off the record player and set it up again. Picked up a couple records this past week, got the new Iron Age 2xLP in the mail and had some records I’d been meaning to listen to for a while now. Everything should be easily identifiable except for Moon Colony Bloodbath that’s oh so good. JD + JV = perfect.

He was a kid like most others, all the adults told him he shouldn’t listen to his music so loud, but it was no use, he couldn’t hear them anyways. One day he was sitting in the park, taking in his surroundings, it was a beautiful day. An old man who must have been around 75 was sitting on the bench adjacent to him was feeding a group of birds. This old man was the kind of person who told boys not to listen to their music so loud because it would damage their hearing. He never listened to Black Sabbath.

On the road behind them cars zoomed by, a vehicle parked on the street forcing them all to merge into the left lane. A driver was cut off so he laid on his horn in a brief fit of rage. “Shut up” yelled the one old man. He went on feeding the birds.

Minutes later an ambulance sped down the street, taking a dying man to the hospital. Again the man yelled “shut up”. He went on feeding the birds.

Soon he ran out of bread crumbs, the birds became restless, some lost interest and flew away, some stayed. One, a seagull mixed amongst a bunch of pidgeons and doves, began squawking at the man. All the man could say was “shut up.”

Tired of this man’s detestation to any sort of noise, the boy got up and left the park, besides, he had somewhere to be. The old man remained, when you get to be that age you don’t really ever have anywhere to go.

Finally it came time for him to leave, the sun was going down and the city was becoming an unsettling place for a 75 year old. He passed a baseball diamond at the north edge of the park, the game ended with a home run, the scoreboard read 7-4. The crowd in the bleachers cheered, hollered and whistled. The man simply muttered “shut up”.

The path home took him down a road where a club was situated amongst several storefronts who had just closed or were vacant. Inside the club the boy’s band was setting up.

The boy checked his final levels and played a riff from Lord Of This World. He let the last note ring out, the sustain was the sweetest sound to him, how it turned into feedback that was unbearable to most. He loved it because it was his, he was the one making this, just himself, the guitar and the amplifier. He loved it because everyone else hated it.

The old man passed the club, completely disgusted by the sustaining noise coming from the boy’s amplifier and yelled “shut up” but it was no use, the boy couldn’t hear him anyways. The old man should have listened to Black Sabbath, maybe everything would be a little more tolerable.

This was my first attempt at writing a short story in a long time.
It probably sucks, whatever.

Actually last night I dreamed a friend and I shoplifted from a department store. All we stole was socks and underwear. We ran to my car, for some reason he tried to pull some Dukes of Hazzard shit and slide over the hook. It was raining, he wiped out.

Still looking for motivation. Eating Glass is playing with Pulling Teeth on July 17th in Montreal, that’s about all i’ve got for getting my zine done. Was this even worth a post? We played our first show since PA/NJ on Friday. It went as well as it could I guess. I always hate playing in Toronto for some reason, I still don’t know exactly why.

After the show Jade and I made pizza, by the time it was finished it was 3am and Jade was asleep. Look for this shit in the aforementioned zine, it will be part one of the hopefully ongoing segment dubbed as “Old Man Colohan’s Recipes For Success.” Shit was real good, sun-dried tomato and artichoke hearts on focaccia, mmm.

Here’s how I spent the better part of my day yesterday. I got a burrito and found a nice park in Toronto and read a good portion of Hot Water Music. Good book, I ended up falling asleep in the park with my book in hand. I now have a stupid tan.

After that I met up with Jade and Billy for food at Sadie’s then went to Rotate with Billy. Skateboarded to Dundas Square because there was something going on attempting to beat a Guinness World Record (most people playing the same song on guitar at the same time?) I went because the number one voted song was Helpless by Neil Young. I had to sit through two awful originals by the band playing and then the other top 9 songs from the list (Canadians fucking suck, you seriously voted Feist and that girl with the song about a basement apartment on a list of the best Canadian guitar songs?)

Furthermore, what a terrible Neil Young song to pick. It’s a great song but I mean lyrically it’s a pretty sad song, definitely not one I’d want to try and break a record with. Musically it’s a piano/slide guitar heavy piece, with the acoustic guitar just barely audible most of the time. They dragged that shit out for like 6 minutes and the asshole playing electric guitar threw in a solo. No one was even singing the chorus properly.

Anyways, thankfully the band was loud enough to drown out the 1600 retards trying to break the record, even though they butchered the song themselves. There were 1600ish people there and the record was in the 1800s. So awesome when the dude from Guinness got onstage and said unfortunately the record wasn’t beat, everyone was so bummed. Good, glad my time wasn’t completely wasted, I always take joy in seeing shitty people bum out.

Toronto is a shit hole, Kitchener is a shit hole, if I could feasibly live in Chicago I would in a second, I don’t know if I could stand being away from my best friends, it’s a scary thought. Same thing goes for cellphones, I’d love to get rid of mine completely but people my age have become so dependent on them (myself included) that I feel I would lose contact with a lot of friends because of it.

I find myself guilty of this from time to time, putting more attention towards someone on the phone before someone I’m in the room with. I know the feeling, it’s just awkward and makes you think…wow this person must really care about what’s going on right here, right now, huh?

If I’m guilty of this around you, knock my phone out of my hand, I feel like a piece of shit when I do this.

Tell me why are you like this
Are you the same with anyone?
Save me from my sickness and tell me
Why do you treat me like this?

I’ve been in a rut all week, finally decided to dig myself out. No use brooding over shit that’s not worth my time, might as well keep positive and do positive things. I’ve got a few crucial replies in regards to the vegan zine, it’s coming together but typing up shit on a typewriter sucks so it’s coming together slowly. I’m hoping June-July, sooner than later. Also, Thanks To You 03 in 2009? Maybe, I love and am extremely proud of my friends and heard something last night that blew me away.

…still exists.

Saw this gem on the drive home from work, almost crashed my car because I was so excited. Hopefully there’s more of this in town. I drove home, grabbed my camera and drove back to get a picture. I’m so easily amused.

Now, we’re going to make a new rule. When you come in here and you hear me typing or whether you DON’T hear me typing, or whatever the FUCK you hear me doing; when I’m in here, it means that I am working, THAT means don’t come in. Now, do you think you can handle that?

Last night Wayfarer played in St. Catharines with Good Luck, Failures Union and the Atlantic. All fantastic bands who you should check out. Anyways, we showed up mega-early and were hanging out in the back of the venue and I found this typewriter. It was huge and I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, then Timur (the guy putting on the show) came back and told me there was another one downstairs and that I could have it if I wanted, AWESOME.

Since I don’t own a printer and neither does anyone in my house, I’ve decided I’m going to type up all of the recipes for my zine on this little guy. Should get annoying after the first 15 minutes but it’ll look punk, and that’s all that matters really.

If you are reading this and are vegan, or good at making some sort of vegan dish, get at me, I need a few more recipes. Sidenote, I suck for reusing episodes for my screencaps but I watched the Shining earlier this week.

This weekend Eating Glass ventured into the USA for the second time. Everything went great, America rules for playing shows, I can’t wait to go back. This is probably going to be a long post so hold onto your butts. Note, photos from Doylestown show taken by Danielle and photos from Edison show taken by Rich.

Friday morning, I’m frantically making my way around the house, making sure I have everything. I packed really light because (I thought) we were only going to be in the USA for a day because we had a show scheduled in Toronto on Saturday. I finally was confident I had everything, killed the last bit of my Dr Pepper and headed to Meinekee for an oil change.

Sitting in Meinekee, this guy walks in dressed in a business suit, sits down next to me with some sort of religious scripture (not sure if it was the bible printed in a different language, or what) but he decides to sit next to me when there are like 7 open chairs with no one around them. He doesn’t say anything and I feel uncomfortable because this dude is huge and in my space. Anyways, few minutes later and my car is ready to go so I bail to Burlington.

Smooth ride, some dong in a Volvo SUV who was driving too fast got bummed out when I pulled out in front of him, he yelled at me as he cut past me so I blew him a kiss, more bummed. Got to Spencer’s, loaded gear up and headed to the music store so he could get sticks. Right before we leave Burlington I ask Spencer and Jeff if they have their IDs, stupid Spencer doesn’t so we have to stop off again at his place.

The border was good, didn’t even get searched which was surprising with visible guitars. We met up with the other car and spent far too long in some shitty little town. The drive was fairly uneventful, Spencer spent most of the time sleeping, Jeff spent most of the time listening to his iPod and I spent most of the time listening to the radio. The only really enjoyable part of the drive was singing along to jams on the radio, not knowing the majority of the words to them and just repeating the lines that we knew. The stand-out jam was I’m Walkin’ by Fats Domino:

We ended up getting a little off course and drove up some sketchy, winding hill thanks to Spencer sucking at navigating but pretty soon we were back on the right course for Doylestown. Within the last stretch of the drive, Dion from War Pigs sent me a text saying the promoter of the Trash Talk/Let Down show that was happening the next day that we had been trying to get on messaged him telling him one band had dropped the show and we could play if we wanted to. Spencer, Jeff and I all agreed that this would be better than heading back to Toronto so Spencer called the dude doing the show in Toronto we were supposed to play to let him know we couldn’t. It was sort of a shitty move but this was a pretty cool opportunity for us.
We arrived in Doylestown at around 7:00, my first impression was that it was a quaint small town. I’m still not sure how big it is but it’s a pretty well kept city with a small town feel. We made our way to the venue and as soon as we got there we saw Drew and Justin from Let Down. We loaded in our gear and everyone bailed for food except Spencer and I. I stuck around because I wanted to see Bongripper. They’re a stoner/doom band from Chicago who had the stage packed with amps. The one guitarist was playing out of two Sound City heads and a Laney, all pumped through Emperor cabs, the other guitarist had an 800, another head and two cabs. The bass player had an Orange head and an Ampeg 8×10 if I remember correctly. Needless to say they were loud. Sure, being loud is cool and all, but make sure with that volume you can still sound good. The band was pretty boring (after being awake for 24 hours I definitely wasn’t in the right mood for that) and their tone sounded pretty shitty overall so I regretted not going to get food.
We played next I think (again, up for over 24 hours at this point, pretty hazy). Our set went over well. A few mess ups but nothing too obvious. We got a good reaction according to Justin. I can never tell as I usually face my amp instead of looking at the crowd, most of the time it’s better looking.
After we played I zoned out and listened to Layin’ Waste’s set from the merch table. Met Dillon, the dude whose house we were staying at. He introduced himself but I’m a deaf retard and couldn’t understand that he was saying “hey I’m Dillon, you guys are staying at my house tonight” until probably the forth time he said it. He lives at the house Equal Vision Records bought for Circa Survive, pretty cool I guess. I wish someone would buy me a house.

War Pigs closed the show and tore the Moose Lodge apart. They opened with the We Gotta Know intro which had 3/4 of the room going off. Played through a good set mixing stuff from their new CD and stuff from the “No Hope…” 7″. If you haven’t listened to them, they’ve got the whole new album streaming here. Check it out, hopefully they’ll be coming up to Toronto in the near future.
After the show we packed up the cars and went with Justin to a diner to get some food. First he took us to a place that took 15 minutes to get to which turned out to be the wrong one. Eventually we got to the right one and hung out with some locals. I couldn’t get a veggie burger because they weren’t vegan so I settled on curly fries, I bathed them in ketchup in hopes of making them a little more filling, they were okay.

The highlight of the diner was this couple who were making out in a booth near us (how romantic). We all laughed at them, Bob from Let Down started yelling shit like “gross”, “he’s fingering her” and “that dude’s got a boner”. Eventually they broke it up and kept awkwardly looking at us thinking we thought what they did was cool. We didn’t, it sucked.

Once we finished paying and left I’d been up for over 30 hours. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and it was evident. I caught myself slowing down to around 25 in a 40 zone a couple of times then eventually someone else caught onto this. We were within 5 minutes of Dillon’s house when I saw sirens flip on behind us. The cop talked to both Rogers and I. I explained my situation and that we were less than 5 minutes from where we were staying and the cop was very understanding. He gave me a breathalyzer anyways to make sure I wasn’t bullshitting about being up forever. It was my first time ever getting a breathalyzer, fun. Apparently he was making fun of me to the dudes in the other car, and when he came back to my car he addressed me as Jay, I guess we were bros? We got back to Dillon’s and I crashed hard on a couch right away.
We woke up and basically had to leave right away because Dillon had to go to work. He gave us all Gatorade and we headed to K Mart to pick up some stuff then spent the majority of the next 3 hours in the parking lot of the Doylestown Center, eating food, skateboarding and just hanging out. The weather was awesome and it was the perfect day to spend outside.
Once that spot got old we went back down to State St. where the Moose Lodge is. Spencer forgot his shirt there the night before so he was hoping to get in and grab it. The doors were locked so we walked to Siren Records, where Dillon works. On the way there we passed a garage sale that had a camping grill for sale. Not completely sure why but Alex bought it. I got sucked in as well and bought a lawn bowling set. I figured it was such a nice day out, hopefully we could make it to a park.
At Siren I picked up Blink 182’s Cheshire Cat on vinyl for $5 and a Record Store Day Obits 7″ with a couple of unreleased tracks. Wish I would have picked up the Jay Reatard/Sonic Youth split because it’s already selling for stupid amounts on eBay. Once we were done there we headed over to a book store and I bought a Doylestown postcard (trying to get a postcard for every US city I play in) and a book about movies and how they impacted famous people.
After the book store we headed back towards the car. By then the Moose Lodge was open and Spencer got his shirt. It was getting late and we wasted too much time sitting around that we had to leave for New Jersey so we couldn’t go to a park/lawn bowl.

The ride was a little under an hour and a half. We were the first ones at the venue aside from the promoter and sound guy. We loaded all of our stuff in, set up the merch then Spencer and I left to get food. I chose to get hummus/pita to save money and Spencer got Subway. The girl working cash at Subway asked “what cartoon is this”, talking about the tattoos on his arm. He replied with something like “it’s original”. She asked “you have this everywhere?” She wanted him, hard.
Anyways, I dropped Spencer back off at the church and went on a waste of time search for an Edison postcard. I went to like ten different places, all of which were puzzled about why I’d want an Edison postcard. I guess Edison isn’t the kind of place people are proud of visiting? With no luck I headed back to the venue. I’m still on the hunt for an Edison postcard, we’ll see how that goes.

We were third and played a much better set than in Doylestown. We were received well, we covered Integrity and kids went pretty nuts. Justin said that was a great reaction for a first time in New Jersey so that was cool. There were also a lot more kids at this show, Doylestown had around 75 and Edison had over 200.
Next up was Let Down. These guys are going to stop playing shows at the end of the summer which sucks because they’re probably the best edge band going right now. Bob is a great frontman and I’m excited to see his other band, Mother of Mercy when they play with Floorpunch in July.

Following Let Down was a local band called Disaster. I guess the point of this band is to just be as ignorant as possible. Dudes were punching people in the face and moshing like wangs for ther 7 minutes of this band’s set. I don’t really get the tough guy shit but whatever.

Trash Talk closed the show, I sort of stopped listening to them once their S/T LP came out, although the production on it is amazing (Steve Albini), the tracks were pretty boring. I downloaded it again after this show, we’ll see if I can get into it now. Kids went crazy for them, there was some shitty dickhead stuff going on in the pit so I took my lawnbowling pins and started throwing them into the crowd for entertainment. Lee, the singer, said he was glad he finally got to see us, which is always a nice thing to hear from someone in a band you expect has never heard of you.
Once the show was done we pawned off as much merch as we could for cheap, stopped at Burger King so everyone could eat garbage then drove back to Canada.

The highlights and lowlights of the long ride home were: Dr Pepper, Cherry Coke, Nutter Butter cookies, funny sex stories, pissing a BK cup while driving and throwing it out my window, subsequently covering the side of my car with piss, a lot of bad classic rock, sleeping in a rest stop parking lot for two hours, Rogers getting a speeding ticket, the border guard asking if we played “the old stuff, the good stuff” when I told him we were a punk band and finally fucking getting home and sleeping in my own bed.

Until next time, America…..