Hey everyone, as promised here is this week's sample! Please stay tuned for more samples before the big release. And stay up to date with all my music and literature releases at my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/mikenajarian!
It is not often that you get to talk about Kurt Cobain with someone who knew him, especially if that someone was Mike Mills of REM. Yeah, you read it right, Mike Mills of REM. As you can imagine it was a pretty spectacular night. It all started kind of randomly. I have a friend in Athens, Georgia who gave me a call when we rolled into town and asked if I needed a place to unwind during the day, as being on a tour bus for an extended period of time can get pretty stifling. She had an apartment right near the venue we were playing, which was a really cool club in Athens called the 40 Watt. The big allure of the club was that it was allegedly where REM got their start from. REM are local heroes in the little college town of Athens, GA and as you know they are world renown rock stars as well. They pretty much put the charm into the town, especially for touring bands like ourselves.
Regardless of REM, who can resist a little down time in a nicely furnished apartment, away from the crowded stinky tour bus. So when we got to Athens, my great friend Justin (our sound engineer at the time) and I went over to my friend’s house to take a load off and relax. As we were lounging around we mentioned how cool the 40 Watt was and how it was cool REM got their start there. “I actually know Mike Mills,” my friend said, “should I invite him to the show?”. “Um, wait, let me think a minute, YES!”. “Alright, I’ll shoot him a text.”. “Okay, cool, tell him we’ll put him on the guestlist, let’s really sweeten this deal!”. So she sent him a text. I wasn’t quite sure how well she knew him, and I definitely didn’t think he would be into coming out to a State Radio show. But it was worth a try. He was clearly a music lover and he probably held the 40 Watt close to his heart.
After the alleged text we hung out for an hour or two longer and then went to the Calling All Crows service project that we did in Athens that day. The project was an Amnesty International sponsored event about the death penalty, and involved Troy Davis, who was recently executed in Georgia despite a shoddy trial and 7 of 9 witnesses recanting their original testimony. Quite disturbing. For those of you that don’t know about Calling All Crows, it is a State Radio founded humanitarian organization that champions public service and women’s rights. You can look it up at www.callingallcrows.org. Get involved! Also, if you haven’t looked into Amnesty International, you should. And look up Troy Davis, he had a pretty unjust time in our justice system.
After the service project we made our way back to the venue to do our sound check. By this time, our friend had allegedly been in contact with Mike Mills and she said he was thinking about coming to the show. We told her we would put him plus 2 on the guestlist in case he wanted to come, but there was no pressure. Just giving the man an option, that’s all! So that’s where it was left with my friend and Mike Mills when we took the stage that evening. I had no idea if he was going to show up. Honestly, I was 99% certain he wasn’t going to show up. It was such a last minute invite and he seemed unsure, which in my experience usually means a no go. And on top of that I thought that he might not want to be around loud music when he was off tour. No matter how much you love music, if you are around loud music all the time its not the #1 thing to do for your ears when its not necessary. As a musician your ears are your greatest asset and you have to protect them against overuse. I wear earplugs everywhere I go that is sort of loud at this point. They look kind of funny, and you often get mistaken for being deaf (people think they are hearing aids), but they are necessary. So on many levels I wasn’t super optimistic about hanging with Mike Mills on this particular night. In addition, I’m sure he gets invited to a million shows by a million aspiring bands. Maybe 99.5% sure he wasn’t going to show up.
But low and behold the show ends and there he is, chilling at the bar. Mike Mills, one of his friends, my friend, and one of her friends. A fearsome foursome! Cool. I guess he showed up. When we went over to say what’s up, Mike was very complimentary of the band. He really appreciated how we changed styles and were original sounding, he said he was pleasantly surprised. My friend later told me that he wasn’t expecting us to be very good but was actually impressed and had a good time watching us. Good enough for me, I’ll take it. Anyway, I invited them back to the bus for a few drinks and a few tequilla shots (as Justin and I had just picked some up recently). They accepted our invitation and came back to the bus. As we were all hanging on the bus there was a funny happening…
To begin, on the way back to the bus I saw Chuck and Jess outside having a little bit of a lover’s quarrel, aka fighting about something really stupid. In case you don’t know, Chuck is the State Radio bass player and Jessica is his wife. I know that Jessica was quite infuriated and Chuck for one of the only times up to that date had raised his voice to her and told her to “shut up”. Now if I told my girlfriend at that time to “shut up” she would have gone ballistic. In fact, she talked so much that I probably wouldn’t be able to ever shut her up long enough to tell her to shut up. Little Italian firecrackers I tell you. Anyway, I don’t think that Jess reacted too well to it that night either. Later, she did admit that Chuck telling her to shut up was well warranted, but that night I think she was fit to be tied. Either way, when Chuck and Jess came on the bus I don’t think they were ready yet for some Najarian and Baumann tequila antics with Mike Mills and friends. In fact, I am quite sure they weren’t.
About 20 minutes after they re-emerged onto the scene I get tracked down by Sybil (Chad of State Radio’s wife and our tour manager) in the back lounge. She asks me to come with her and she takes me outside. She looks at me real stern. “Would it be possible that Mike Mills’s friend just shit on the bus?”.
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Preview of Chapter on Australia Tour with State Radio
Its pretty bad when your testicle shows up on the internet from when you were in Australia. Its even worse when you find out your testicle is on the internet from your Mother. Its even worse than that when she calls you into the computer room out of nowhere and says, “Hey Michael, look at this,” in a nice, calm voice, and when you look at the computer screen there is a picture of you wearing pink ‘The Beautiful Girls’ panties, a ‘Cape Cod: Like No Place on Earth’ green mesh cut off shirt, eye black under your eyes, and have one testicle hanging out. “Well, that’s me singing in Australia Mom,” I said back to her just as calmly. “No, she said, what’s that?” she said and pointed to the general area of my testicle. “Well, that’s my testicle Mom.”. “And what’s it doing on the internet?”. “I don’t know, I didn’t put it there…”. “What are your kids going to think when they see this picture of you? Its not cool to have this stuff floating around on the internet!”. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until I have kids and hope they don’t see it.”. Laughter ensues from my end. “It’s not funny Michael! I’m serious. This isn’t cool!”. More laughter from my end. “There’s nothing we can do about it now Mom.”. And then I left the room. Surprisingly, I wasn’t embarrassed, even in front of my Mom. In my mind, at that moment, the experience was worth it, and if the picture was seen by my kids, then so be it. And even now as I am writing this, I am still chuckling about that night. It brings a smile to my face every time I think about it. Oh, fond memories of exposing myself in Australia. Before you think I am this weird sex offender-esque freaky deeky dude please give me a chance to explain myself. I’m sure you will come to the same conclusion as me. And for the record, I had no intention to expose myself, I promise.
I’m going to guess it was in the late Fall, early Winter in 2007 that we went to Australia for the first time. We had played with a band called The Beautiful Girls in the U.S. and then they invited us to play over in Australia to return the favor. This was an amazing tour. We got to take a two and a half week break from the harsh New England weather and enjoy the Australian easy living Summer for a bit. At this point we had become great friends with the guys in The Beautiful Girls (there are actually no girls in the band) and we had a great camaraderie going on for this entire tour. There were so many cool things that happened on this tour that I couldn’t even fit all of them in a single memoir. On top of that, some of my experiences have been sworn to secrecy. I will briefly touch on a few of my experiences that tour though just to build up to my infamous testicle showing.
First off, on a work related note, I learned so much from my still good friend and The Beautiful Girls drummer Bruce Braybrooke. He taught me so much about professional drumming by the way he approached the art. When The Beautiful Girls came and played in the U.S., Brucie used my drum kit. When I told him he could move around my set up he replied, “Naw, I’ll just keep it as is, that looks great.”. At first I was confused, no drummer had ever said this to me before. Most drummers are pretty anal about the way they set up their kit, and the angles at which they put their drums and cymbals. I told Brucie about my confusion and he said to me, “You are a professional, I am a professional. Professionals should be able to roll with the punches and be able to play any set up. That’s part of the fun of it anyway. Everyone needs change or things get boring. Also, the more set ups you try, the more you see why people set up their drums a certain way, and it will make your personal set up better and more researched in the long run.” I had never even heard this philosophy before. Like I said, most drummers are quite anal about their drums, I was actually a very lax drummer, I always offered up my drum kit to whoever wanted to use it. I thought about what Brucie said and I replied, “Well, it looks like I will have to use your set up exactly how it is if we ever come to Australia! That’s only fair.”. Brucie liked this response, I could tell by the look on his face. And just like that my philosophy on drumming was forever changed and I had gained a life long friend. Weird how life works sometimes.
Brucie also taught me a lot about how to take care of your musician friends. He was so welcoming and went way out of his way for us when we went to Australia. This also changed my philosophy on how you should treat a guest. Brucie went way out of his way to help me have one of the best experiences of my life. Giving is better than receiving to some I guess. Definitely is for Bruce.
One of the coolest things Brucie did was take us up to his friends’ “treehouse” up in the rainforest a few hours from Byron Bay. This place was quite amazing. It was this mansion on a mountain in the Australian rainforest. Score! What a sick place this was. And the people who lived there were these amazing free spirited people who had a great outlook on life, and really made it an awesome experience for us all. As legend has it, the girl who scoped it out and facilitated renting out the house (her name was Polly), said as she was driving up the driveway for the first time there were two snakes in the middle of the driveway making love. When she saw this she thought, “Yup, this is the place!”. Now, if that was me I would think, “Hell No! Deadly snakes in my driveway!”. I mean, these aren’t just little New England gardener snakes we are talking about here. These are Australian Rainforest death machines. And if you can imagine, for all the snakes around there was also just as many deadly spiders. In fact, there was a deadly spider that was on the porch of the house right outside the master bedroom. Polly lived in the master bedroom with her boyfriend Jamie and was totally cool with having the spider live there. Further, she actually preferred it living there.
Beyond the deadly wildlife, the Rainforest was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The vegetation was amazing, and being on top of the mountain gave us a sick panoramic of the area. It was very similar to the way Hawaii is, but a tiny bit nicer in my opinion. In addition, the area was filled with magic mushrooms. “Mushies” is what they called them. When we got to the house there was a bunch of mushies that we just chilling in a jar with honey. Now I’m not one to frequent psychedelic drugs, but when you are in the Australian Rainforest… well you make exceptions. So yeah, we had a few nights off that we went to the Treehouse and decided to partake in the magic mushrooms with everyone there. There were a few notable experiences that resulted from this scene of scenes...
I’m going to guess it was in the late Fall, early Winter in 2007 that we went to Australia for the first time. We had played with a band called The Beautiful Girls in the U.S. and then they invited us to play over in Australia to return the favor. This was an amazing tour. We got to take a two and a half week break from the harsh New England weather and enjoy the Australian easy living Summer for a bit. At this point we had become great friends with the guys in The Beautiful Girls (there are actually no girls in the band) and we had a great camaraderie going on for this entire tour. There were so many cool things that happened on this tour that I couldn’t even fit all of them in a single memoir. On top of that, some of my experiences have been sworn to secrecy. I will briefly touch on a few of my experiences that tour though just to build up to my infamous testicle showing.
First off, on a work related note, I learned so much from my still good friend and The Beautiful Girls drummer Bruce Braybrooke. He taught me so much about professional drumming by the way he approached the art. When The Beautiful Girls came and played in the U.S., Brucie used my drum kit. When I told him he could move around my set up he replied, “Naw, I’ll just keep it as is, that looks great.”. At first I was confused, no drummer had ever said this to me before. Most drummers are pretty anal about the way they set up their kit, and the angles at which they put their drums and cymbals. I told Brucie about my confusion and he said to me, “You are a professional, I am a professional. Professionals should be able to roll with the punches and be able to play any set up. That’s part of the fun of it anyway. Everyone needs change or things get boring. Also, the more set ups you try, the more you see why people set up their drums a certain way, and it will make your personal set up better and more researched in the long run.” I had never even heard this philosophy before. Like I said, most drummers are quite anal about their drums, I was actually a very lax drummer, I always offered up my drum kit to whoever wanted to use it. I thought about what Brucie said and I replied, “Well, it looks like I will have to use your set up exactly how it is if we ever come to Australia! That’s only fair.”. Brucie liked this response, I could tell by the look on his face. And just like that my philosophy on drumming was forever changed and I had gained a life long friend. Weird how life works sometimes.
Brucie also taught me a lot about how to take care of your musician friends. He was so welcoming and went way out of his way for us when we went to Australia. This also changed my philosophy on how you should treat a guest. Brucie went way out of his way to help me have one of the best experiences of my life. Giving is better than receiving to some I guess. Definitely is for Bruce.
One of the coolest things Brucie did was take us up to his friends’ “treehouse” up in the rainforest a few hours from Byron Bay. This place was quite amazing. It was this mansion on a mountain in the Australian rainforest. Score! What a sick place this was. And the people who lived there were these amazing free spirited people who had a great outlook on life, and really made it an awesome experience for us all. As legend has it, the girl who scoped it out and facilitated renting out the house (her name was Polly), said as she was driving up the driveway for the first time there were two snakes in the middle of the driveway making love. When she saw this she thought, “Yup, this is the place!”. Now, if that was me I would think, “Hell No! Deadly snakes in my driveway!”. I mean, these aren’t just little New England gardener snakes we are talking about here. These are Australian Rainforest death machines. And if you can imagine, for all the snakes around there was also just as many deadly spiders. In fact, there was a deadly spider that was on the porch of the house right outside the master bedroom. Polly lived in the master bedroom with her boyfriend Jamie and was totally cool with having the spider live there. Further, she actually preferred it living there.
Beyond the deadly wildlife, the Rainforest was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The vegetation was amazing, and being on top of the mountain gave us a sick panoramic of the area. It was very similar to the way Hawaii is, but a tiny bit nicer in my opinion. In addition, the area was filled with magic mushrooms. “Mushies” is what they called them. When we got to the house there was a bunch of mushies that we just chilling in a jar with honey. Now I’m not one to frequent psychedelic drugs, but when you are in the Australian Rainforest… well you make exceptions. So yeah, we had a few nights off that we went to the Treehouse and decided to partake in the magic mushrooms with everyone there. There were a few notable experiences that resulted from this scene of scenes...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)