Archive | did I mention I was in a band?
Photos I found on my mom's computer
More photos of me? If you insist. I was on my mom’s computer looking for porn (note: not looking for porn) when I found these photos that I must have put on there when they were emailed to me and I was using her computer and etcetera. Plus, since Anna David posted on the Activity Pit that she wasn’t afraid to trot out some Alison Rosen material and then Joe asked for some baby pictures I thought I might beat them to the punch. Not that they actually have access to my baby photos, but you know. So, shall we?
Here I am taking a nap before the dawn of color photography. This actually is a daguerreotype.
And here I am wearing a bandanna on my head after a hard day of child labor. Also, my older brothers enjoyed dressing me up in ridiculous get ups and I’m thinking this was one of them.
Here I am hanging out with my older brother Josh. He’s so totally imitating me here but that’s Josh, always trying to do what I do.
Here I am many years later playing in The Angoras. Yes, I know my legs look fat here.
Here I am being tuff with the band, hanging out on a car. That’s the kind of outlaw shit we did in OC. We didn’t even play instruments, just hung out on fully-hotrodded titz rides. In fact, I’m surprised there aren’t any flames on the side of this vehicle. There’s very unusual.
Here we are on tour after I’d clearly made some kind of hugely embarrassing admission.
See how tuff we were? By the way, if you own this cassette it’s totally worth the cost of a used cassette right now.
Here I am holding a baby. Come and get it quick men, I think I just ovulated. Oh and if you happen to click on this photo let me say right now that I don’t know what’s up with my eyebrow. I must have shaved it like that in prison. [update: maybe this isn’t the photo but there’s a photo of me like this where it looks like there’s a Vanilla Ice-style notch missing from my eyebrow, hence the explanation. The unnecessary explanation.]
And here’s my sister and me just hanging out. This was probably the last time I had a tan and wore a tank top. Actually, I’ll have you know that’s not just any tank top, it’s Wonder Woman Underoos.
I'm in CA
Sorry readers, didn’t mean to be so cryptic. Or did I?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Anyway, I’m back in California playing guitar at another wedding. Not really. I’m getting my hair straightened. Not really, I’m here for work. I thought it would be super awesome but now that I’m by the beach and on deadline(s) I’m realizing that I wish I were just on vacation! Not that I like the beach, but that the beach makes you want to be on vacation.
Could I possibly say and then negate anything more in the above paragraph? No. Get it?
I was thinking about liveblogging the flight, except I wouldn’t be able to truly liveblog it since you have to turn off the internal transmitters of the [this is where my brain tunes out] but anyway, the things I would have said were:
1. I found a loogie sitting on the floor of the airplane bathroom. I thought of cleaning it up, and then decided that I didn’t want to come in that close contact with it. Instead I had to basically do this uncomfortable hopping gyrating thing to move around in there so as to avoid accidentally dragging a shoelace through said throat snot. Just thinking about it makes me want to retch.
2. okay, maybe it was a small puddle of soapy water
3. I’m not sure though
4. it was about two inches from the toilet. I don’t even want to think about what it was.
5. Foamy urine?
6. ugh
7. Hell’s Kitchen is entertaining. I’d never seen it before. But Bobby? Infuriating!
8. Real Housewives of NYC is kind of boring.
9. Six hours and 17 minutes flying time is long time to try to get into a show.
10. The male flight attendant smelled good. First I thought he was albino and I was thinking that were I liveblogging this I would say that the flight attendant is albino, and I wonder if that’s good luck. But by the end of the flight I’d totally come around to realizing he both had pigment and smelled good.
11. I really liked that band Belly. Liked/like. I was listening to King on the plane which I recently found and put on my iPod and then I was thinking that I listened to this album 13 years ago or something and am I a relic? Are my tastes fossilized? I liked/like Throwing Muses too and I still list them when people ask about my favorite bands, but I’d forgotten about Belly.
12. So then I decided to listen to Whatever Hits from the 90s or whatever it’s called. But I only listened to a couple songs. I had to scroll past a lot of them.
13. I’m procrastinating.
14. I mean, the funny thing is that I don’t even really like girl singers, or in the old days I didn’t. With the exception of Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donnelly.
15. The old days being before I started playing in a band because I think that changed my tastes.
16. Tobey is as cute as ever, in case you’re wondering.
17. Fred the Jade Plant and Rita the Golden Pothos (yes, I have another houseplant. I was waiting for the right time to tell you. Number 17 is as good a time as any) are doing well, for those who asked.
18. “Wouch” or “WOWCH” is what you should say when someone surprises you by saying something insulting. (wow + ouch)
19. Guyvice is when a guy offers you guy advice (guy + advice) except I was recently told that “guyvice sounds like a device to make my head explode.”
More from the nostalgia vault?
Okay, only because you are begging (note: you aren’t begging). This one’s from the footnote period and for that I’m still sorry.
Thursday, November 2, 2000 – 12:00 am
The Cramps
Galaxy Concert Theatre
Friday, Oct. 27
It was a Goth meat market at the Galaxy on the night the Cramps played this sold-out show. It was impossible to squish your way past any group of people without feeling their unwelcome, eyeliner-rimmed glances. I hate sold-out shows. They’re great for the band, but they suck for the audience. And then I begin to hate everyone. Such as the drunk, PVC-wearing, Goth Bettie Page girl, who really, really, really wanted to talk to the guy seated at the table to my left and who communicated her burning need to talk to him by climbing over me and punching him. And then there was the guy that my roommate and I call—in all seriousness—Civilization Guy because two weekends ago he approached a friend of ours and used this suave1 pickup line: “Civilization—do you think it’s on the ascent or the decline?”2 Actually, Civilization Guy was more fun to watch than the Cramps because of the way he turned the White Man Shuffle into an aerobic activity. Kudos to Civilization Guy! But just when I’d start really getting into his small-windmills-plus-jerky-arrhythmic-leg-lifts, the icky Bettie Page girl would climb over me, and I would be yanked right out of the moment.
“Hey, who’s the sexy old blond?” Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. Commie Girl, asked me, nodding toward the stage. I told her it was Wally George, but I was lying. The Sexy Old Blond was really the Cramps’ bass player, who wasn’t sexy and whose wig was more pink than blond and who danced around the stage like a flower—if a flower could dance. Each Cramps member has a specific way of moving. Wally George dances like a flower. Guitar player Poison Ivy, who was wearing this bitty little dress that just barely grazed the top of her white, frilly underpants (which appeared to be stuffed with something), stalks the stage in a slow, sultry, deliberate way, which is probably all she can do in those high-heeled boots. And she glares at everyone in this way that is incredibly sexy and very cool and makes me wonder whether in the early days of the Cramps she had to deal with a bunch of well-wishers telling her she should smile and move around more and try to look like she’s having fun up there.3 Snarly singer Lux Interior struts from the back of the stage to the front and then back and then front again. Sometimes he lunges forward, and sometimes he deep-throats the microphone. Also, he throws the microphone stand forward but holds on to the cord, and sometimes he wraps the cord around his neck. He was wearing some kind of non-breathing, shiny, rubbery outfit, in case you’re wondering. As for the drummer, I don’t know; I couldn’t see him.
They opened with “Cramp Stomp” and then tore through a fairly long set of slow, snarly, inspired, groovy, bluesy hits with little patter in between songs. And despite the slow snarliness of it all, there was still a gaggle o’ dickheads in the crowd who moshed. Every now and then, they’d lift one of their own into the air and then pass the human offering forward, where he’d fall, eventually, into the arms of the security guards, who would toss him to the side, where he’d pick himself up, do a lap, and then run back into the pit. All hell briefly broke loose around 10:50 p.m., when the security guards were busy restraining someone. That diversion opened a space for a woman to run onstage and do some kind of menacing wavy arm thing in the direction of a nonplused Ivy. This went on for about three seconds before she was ambushed and carried offstage and more security guards were dispatched.
This was around the time Civilization Guy really began feelin’ it, though, so I couldn’t really tell you what happened onstage next. (Alison M. Rosen)
1. Pronounced “sua-VAY.”
2. She said ascent. I would say the same thing, although I’m a pessimist. Go figure.
3. Because I play in a band and people tell me that all the time, except for the people who say I remind them of Poison Ivy. I like them. I hate everyone else. Did I mention that sold-out shows make me hate everyone?
The Angoras tracks—now embedded!
Thanks to Kim from The Activity Pit for the tips on how to do this.
You wanted to hear The Angoras?
After messing around so long on last.fm (and getting nowhere really) that I want to punch myself, I finally just uploaded the songs to my page on The Activity Pit. Kim, I hope you enjoy these page views. (that sounded really obnoxious didn’t it? in a cyber nerd kind of way? what has become of me?)
http://activitypit.ning.com/profile/Alison
And video does actually exist. Not of the reunion show but from years ago. In theory I could put this up but if I spend any more time dealing with putting band stuff on my blog I will scream. Not that my screaming isn’t felicitous, because it is. As is my warbling. Basically not one tone escapes my throat that isn’t dulcet. Frankly speaking, of course.
remainder shots
Like when I tell people the fact that I sometimes have to explain jokes means they’re funny, the fact that I am looking down to see what I’m doing means I rock.
song sample
Okay so I will learn how to put an actual song but for now I found this, which is a tiny sample of a song we had on a soundtrack. Go here and find “Sick Dance” by The Angoras.
You requested photos of the mini band reunion?
Here we are, playing at Yami’s wedding reception on gear we borrowed from the actual wedding band and friendly instrument-owning friends. That’s Tim on drums, Paula (lead vocals) in the middle and Yami in the wedding dress on the right. Tim and Paula still play in bands. After The Angoras (that was our name), Tim moved to Portland to play in the now defunct Epoxies, and Paula moved to Seattle and she plays in The Heels.
This is an un-hot shot of me. But I like the Paula and Yami action. But wait, how could we so effortlessly just pick up and play after so many years? I’m kind of joking, since I don’t know how seamless it really was, but anyway, we practiced earlier that day:
Here’s Yami and me, yesterday morning, on borrowed equipment in our friend’s studio in the back of a part of Costa Mesa, CA referred to as “Analog Alley” because of a couple recording studios there that until recently eschewed digital technology. That was the first time I’ve touched a guitar in years. Later that night I played drums for awhile (when the band formed I was the drummer, which is a long story for another day), but anyway, now I really miss playing, even if my hands are blistered.
Jodey from Supernova on left, Paula and Yami. But wait, now you’re probably wanting to see some pictures from back in the day, right? I know you so well.
Here’s a tour shot. We were playing Old Ironsides in Sacramento. This must have been about 7 or 8 years ago, because Yami was pregnant with her daughter in this shot, and her daughter is now 7, which makes me feel uncomfortably old. Also on this tour people kept asking if I was pregnant, because they heard someone in the band was pregnant, which was good for my self-esteem.”Well, you’re glowing!” they’d say when I reacted violently.
Yami on tour
Paula on tour
Me, playing at the Troubadour. I think we were opening for the Murder City Devils here.
Tim, in a mullet fashioned from my blue hair extensions. (We had some time to kill on tour)