At a Chicago Metafilter meetup about a month ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a man named Eamon Daly and his incredible super-powered beard. Now he is harnessing the power of his beard for charity. Ladies and gentlemen, Things My Beard Can Lift. Go make a tax-deductible donation now so we can all see Eamon's magnificent mane tested to its limits.

Labels: bloggy, link

Following the continuing adventures of my friend Brendan, he is now a blogger at hackerspaces.org. Read his first post, and go leave some comments to make him feel at home.

Labels: bloggy, link

My pal Brendan (mentioned previously) showed up in this picture on BoingBoing Gadgets. He should be thankful he got into a post with a sweet robot instead of some lame steampunk thing. Way to go, man!

Labels: bloggy, link

The first time I saw the band I Need Sleep was in a Halloween-themed basement show. I can't remember the year exactly, but October of 2002 sounds close. I was an immediate fan, and as the ever-changing cast of members rotated, eventually they invited me to play with them. We played some terrible shows, we played some incredible shows, we made a studio album, and we went on tour, we won a battle of the bands. I left the band sometime in 2005 or 2006 (I can't remember exactly anymore), and although I've got a whole heap of memories and stories from playing in the band, I was a disappointed that there seemed to be so little video of the band performing. People frequently had video cameras at the shows, and there were rumors that some totally awesome tape was going around, but they never seemed to surface.

Then, about a week ago, a friend of the band named Paul from DeKalb uploaded some videos of an old show to YouTube. The clips are incomplete, and the audio is terrible, but it still embodies the spirit of what those shows were like. I realized that I had a few videos on my computer that I had never bothered to upload, and that maybe if I added to Paul's videos, perhaps others would make their private collections available as well. Since I feel it's so important to preserve this stuff for posterity, this post will hopefully serve as the ultimate I Need Sleep video repository. So, here they are:

• I Need Sleep on October 4th, 2003 - This was my first time ever playing on a stage (aside from being in the school orchestra). I was asked to stand in because Justin Powers and Dan Huff couldn't make the show. You can see how low-key the band was in those early days.


• I Need Sleep at the Fat Bean on February 6th, 2004 - The Fat Bean was a coffee house that served as the petri dish in which early I Need Sleep was allowed to grow. The band was still relatively calm at this point. I had planned a series of mini-documentary videos like this, but it became hard since I was more frequently playing with the band than watching them. Notice Dan Nagy playing drums and synth bass simultaneously, and don't miss Dan Huff's words of wisdom at the end.


• I Need Sleep at 602 North part 1, part 2, part 3, & part 4 - You can see the beginnings of the bat-shit-insane I Need Sleep in these videos. Dan Huff is gone at this point, but Brian and I have become official members. Justin wasn't at this show, and I don't generally regard this as a very good performance, but it was the beginning of a seriously fun stage in the band's history.


• I Need Sleep at Huskies Bar & Grill in Dekalb part 1, part 2, & part 3 - The audio on these videos does the actual show no justice, but the energy is there. Here we have the band's lineup as it was represented on the album: DL, Justin Powers, Dan Nagy, Brian Shebake, and myself. This was one of the first shows in which we passed out things for the audience to bang on, which made the whole room our rhythm section. Talk about audience participation.


• I Need Sleep at the Shape Shop in Chicago - There's a big chunk of time missing between this video and the last one. This video is after Brian Shebake, Dan Nagy, and I had left. This is even after Kevin Kozak, who was one of my favorite members, had come and gone. You can see that the choice of instrumentation had been pared down to the basics here, but the structure of the songs was starting to get more complex.

This is not a complete video list. I know for a fact that there is at least one more video I have on a tape hidden somewhere at my parent's house, and with any luck I will find that. Also, I'm sure there are people out there with videos who have not put them online yet. Please send an email to davemakes@gmail.com if this is the case, and if you need help putting it on the internet, I will lend you a hand.

Another thing is that I Need Sleep is still around making great music, albeit in Tennessee and with an almost completely fresh lineup, but hopefully as they play shows in the future, people will be more vigilant about recording and sharing them.

Thanks to the people who have uploaded their videos. I hope to see a many more in the future.

Labels: bloggy, link, music, video

Here is my bestest friend Justin Powers playing Cobaki Creek while standing in a bathtub full of water.



I'm not sure why he had to be standing in a bathtub full of water, but I theorize that it was so he would properly conduct rocktricity. That would explain why he has also played into a clothes dryer. You know, to gather static rocktricity. He's taken that video off YouTube for now. It should resurface later.

Linking to MySpace isn't really my thing, but that's where Justin keeps recordings of his killer original songs, and I highly recommend listening to them.

Labels: link

You know when you stop by your childhood friend's facebook page to tell him you found a copy of an obscure Sega Genesis game, and then it turns out that he's received a $25,000 grant to travel the world researching the free software movement and he's writing a blog about it called Without a Traceroute?

Maybe not. Well, it's a little surprising, and pretty awesome, so I thought I'd give him a little link love. Brendan McCollam, everybody!

Labels: bloggy, link

This week I had the great pleasure of meeting John Hodgman at a signing of his excellent new book More Information Than You Require. You may also know him as the minor television personality who plays the PC on the Mac and PC ads. Above you can see a picture of myself trying to ask a question about audiobooks while John makes me laugh. It was a wonderful book signing, I have never witnessed so much swearing and drinking of strange liquors in such close proximity to the children's section of Borders. Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Hodgman.



THAT IS ALL.

Labels: link