It’s Murder! can now be downloaded in one of two ways:

1. On screen version. Made for viewing on your computer.

2. Print version. So if you want to print out your very own copy of It’s Murder! it’s formatted for optimal . . uh . . reading.

I’m going to submit this photo to JPG Magazine.

Maybe you can all vote for it when I do?

Adobe LightRoom is fantastic.

Just look how cool I can make Bruce look!

My zine, It’s Murder! can be downloaded in .pdf by clicking on the It’s Murder! tab at the top of the page.

How cool is that?

Update – 5.4.08

So I haven’t done anything with It’s Murder! in a while, so I decided to take the tab down from the menu, you can still download it by clicking here.

So I’ve been working on this post about Fantastic Floor for a while. I’m sick of cleaning it up, and I don’t really feel like writing about it any longer.

So here’s a rough draft. It’s all non-unified in it’s reasoning.

Fantastic Floor Sucks (but is it art?)

Disclaimer: This post is about Bruce’s BAND, not Bruce. Don’t think that because I’m writing a rather harsh critique that this reflects on my opinion of Bruce. Criticizing someones creation is not the same thing as criticizing the creator, keep that in mind. Bruce is a nice guy.

There were many Problems with the now defunct Fantastic Floor. Time constraints, not having like-minded band mates, little or no leadership, an incredibly hard subject to work from. But the greatest problems, the ones that would eventually take F.F. down was the lack of a clear vision and no well defined goals or any tangible ideas from which to draw reference and inspiration.

What Bruce knew about his vision for the band was:

1.He wanted it to be conceptual.

Conceptual like singing chants in the park to the God[s] of other religions, like giving speeches without the letters a, e, i o and u, like bleeding just to see how conceptual you can get before you pass out. Conceptual like doing everything that you would do normally, except just because you are doing everything normally, it’s not normal, but it still is.

2.He wanted it to be different.

You know different. Plums in perfume. Getting an ear implanted in your arm. All sorts of inverted philosophys and ideals. Different like not having to be another excessive, eccentric indie band.

What Bruce did not know is:

1.Everything else. Everything.

What to do, what he wants, what he doesn’t want, what the vision is, where to get inspiration from, what influences it, how to convey his ideas, who to include in the band, what ideas are to far out there and what will still be accessible to the audience.

See the problem? He’s got the initiative, but not the vision. The drive, but no inspiration.

Here’s a story that describes the process that Bruce seems to go through when creating art.

We were assigned to read Spoon River for English class. Sitting in the back, naturally I was handed the book that was most worn. This same book also had at least forty hand written sticky notes scattered throughout the pages. Gingerly, I flipped through, taking out each note and placing in a scattered pile on my desk. After I had taken all of them out Bruce turned around to me face me and took them. As he turned back I heard him mutter, quite pleased with himself it’s conceptual.

A year passes and I ask him what he ever did with those notes. Nothing he said “I didn’t have anything to do with them, so I finally threw them away.

He had seem those sticky notes sitting on my desk in English, thought that he could make some [conceptual] art out of them, and never having any ideas or clear vision for what he could do with them eventually threw them away.

That story illustrates what happened to Fantastic Floor, and in broader sense what happens to many of his artistic projects.

1.Spark.

He wants to create art. Something conceptual perhaps?

2.Opportunity.

Battle of the bands! I’ll start a conceptual band!

3.Lack of vision.

Practices are weird, music gets played, but no really conceptual stuff happens. Other band members don’t know what conceptual even is (intangible phrases don’t a band make).

4.Lack of leadership.

Bruce is a member of the band, not the leader. Failure to express ideas leaves band in the dark and Bruce frustrated that that practices aren’t going well.

5.Weird ending.

If it does get to this step, the show just turns out weird and disorganized. No form during practice results in: no form during performance. If there was anything conceptual Yoko Ono or Phillip Glass already did it. Nothing original. Creativity is the hardest part (shouldn’t be).

Eventually I’m going to patch this article up and put it in the next issue of It’s Murder!

We went to a llama farm for my homecoming date last year. That’s my date with the llama.

I’ve been avoiding posting for a while because I’m been so bummer on my last photo shoot. I’m not good at shooting bands. At all.

But I told them I’d post the photos, like last week.

So here it is, a week late and crapper then ever.

 

On a less whiney note, I finished the first issue of my zine It’s Murder! so I’ll be making that avaible in pdf format as soon as I figure out how. (1-2 weeks)

[update] I fixed The Virtual Pandas link.

Fantastic Floor is doing really well. The show’s going to be killer, the cassette even better.

I shot Landon and D. Fresh’s band The Virtual Pandas the other day. Shooting a picture with multiple people is much harder then just doing a single person.

I hate everyone. I hate the stupid Latio chicks who will not shut up in my sewing, even though they’re talking in Spanish, I can tell what your saying, you have THE SAME CONVERSATION EVERY TIME, someone likes a boy. I get it. I hate my ballroom teacher who thinks she’s Gods gift to students, who talks about respect but is exempt from that rule because I’m the teacher and you need to respect me. I hate my sewing teacher who takes five minutes to pull her attention from her computer to answer a question, then gets mad at me for needing further explanation, I hate that because I’m a boy in sewing I get all sorts of unwanted attention whenever I walk into a sewing supply store. If you want me to buy your products, don’t make fun of the way I talk, damn it, your vocabulary sounds just as stupid to me. Eat it. I hate that stupid slutty girl, who keeps trying to talk to me. Look, if I wanted to talk about how stupid your mom is, or how crazy you are, or even your boobs, don’t you think that I would? But I don’t, right? So that must mean that I don’t want to talk about your mom, [lack of] personality or boobs. You dumbass. I hate my art teacher who won’t spend more then thirty seconds with any student because he’s always on the go. I hate the creepy couple who I have two classes with, and rest assured they’re always all over each other (but in a sort of tame way, it would be interesting it I didn’t want to sell my soul to the devil every time I saw ether of their creepy faces). Most of all: I hate the incompetent staff at Allen’s Photography. When I say I want the film developed and scanned, that means I want it developed and SCANNED, I wasn’t just saying SCANNED because I like the way the word feels when it comes out of my mouth. Allen’s you piece of shit. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

The last post was brief because I was in a hurry, so now I will explain the details as I understand them.

The designs on this and the latest post are for the upcoming Fantastic Floor cassette ep release show. About 20 cassettes will be given away, on them will be 3-5 tracks (I’m not sure at all how many, but this is a good guess for an ep). The music will be recorded onto previously owned cassettes with some of the audio intact at the end, thus making each ep individual.

To keep with the theme of every cassette being different the idea was proposed that each case be different, which is what your seeing here.

The designs are in three sections.
1. The general feeling is that there will be text on the back, so in the designing process I’ve kept the backs a simple color.
2. The spine. Displays the name of the band and will often be colored different then the front or back.
3. Mostly minimalist in design the front (farthest to the right, and the biggest area) is what the rest of each ep design revolves around. Many of the designs center around the boy (Danny H.) with the guitar on his back (which is the unofficial F.F. theme).

Bruce correct me on anything that I missed, or got wrong.