Full Service Music

Hoag!

HOAGMAN SAYS:

February 5, 2009
Some interesting tidbits from Hoag as we head out on our southeast toursaw:

Everything I know about the space-time continuum I learned from watching “Lost.”

I think the best use of the tambourine is on “We Can Work it Out” by the Beatles.

My favorite drummer ever just might be Terminator X, who is really a turntablist. Runner up? Animal, the muppet.

Drumsticks cost too much. I need a drumstick endorsement.

My top-3 favorite combinations are apples/cheese, kick/snare, and me/nessie.

I love eating pretzels, and I love drinking beer, but I hate going back and forth between the two.

Smell is perhaps at his funniest when he has the flu.

The most bewildering feeling is waking up after a nap on the beach. You wake up ten times as tired as you were before you fell asleep, eleven times as hot, and the world looks 12 times as bright.

The song I wish I wrote was “You Still Believe in Me” by the Beach Boys.

I’m pretty sure the song Bonesaw wishes he wrote was “Life By The Drop,” by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Maybe someday I’ll learn how to drive.

I wish they would include black markers in fabric-marker sets.

One time after we came back from a tour, I didn’t unpack my bags until we left for the next tour.

I hate Wal-Mart, but I have a pair of $9 sneakers from there, proving that it’s sometimes hard to stay true to your ideals.

I don’t think our cat Jack is fat, I honestly think other cats are just small wimpy scrubs.

April 14, 2008
In this, my first personal entry since probably sometime in 2006, I will touch upon many subjects, including:

--warming up before shows

--the popular myth that sharing a drumkit with the other bands on the bill saves time between sets

--my new business enterprise

--reggae music

--the most ridiculous money transaction ever made

1) I go back and forth with whether or not I should warm up before shows. Sometimes I think it’s a good idea to literally get warm, get the blood moving, so you don’t go up there cold and start a dead sprint. A short jog, a game of foosball, or some push-ups work perfectly. But as far as stick exercises? I really don’t think I benefit from them. I’m not from the drum-corps school of thought. I tend to place greater importance on my mental preparedness. Am I in a state in which I can really get myself in “the zone” and give (and take) everything from the songs we are about to play? To get into this zone, a drink or two might help, or even just a relaxed hang with the dudes. Maybe a game of hearts or rummy.

2) Sharing a drum kit does not save time between bands. I’ve long wished to publicly debunk this myth. It takes just as long to re-align, re-adjust, and re-tune than it does to set up your own kit. If only I had the balls to tell this to cranky soundguys.

3) I’ve decided to start selling home-made t-shirts. I’ll use my fabric markers to make designs/slogans/illustrations on blank white T’s, and I’ll sell them for $5 a piece. No two shirts will ever have the same design. They will all be one-of-a-kind. Mass production ruins things. If there was only one glam-band ever in the world, say “Poison”, I bet we’d all be like “Woah, this is so weird and cool”, but since there were twenty-thousand of them, it was lame.

4) Recently a girl from the Daily Texan interviewed us and asked us what we would say to a college student to convince him or her to listen to reggae music. (They’re doing a feature on us to promote the Reggae Festival). I can’t really imagine having to convince someone to listen to reggae music. It’s so widely regarded as a good groove and a good feeling, a “people rhythm” as the great patriarch once called it, that no verbal prompting would be required. All you’d need to do is play them a quick sample and they’d start to feel it. They’d recognize that feeling, like they knew it from somewhere. And they’d realize that they know it from themselves, and from the rhythm of the human race, “people walking, people moving”. This is one of reggae’s central truths: “who feels it, knows it”

If you’re tuned into and “feel” your own pulse and that of others around you, the reggae drop-groove will reaffirm and enhance that pulse. You will “know” it more deeply. And if you’re not tuned in, the groove can help you re-establish and re-ignite that pulse. I think the kinds of music you’d have to “convince” people to listen to or understand would be metal or some really avant garde shit (both of which I happen to love), but the pulse in reggae is the most natural thing in the world, everybody knows it.

5) The other day one of my friends got a two dollar bill back in change from a cashier. This friend was completely unappreciative of how special this was, but my other friend and I were not. We offered him $3 for it, and he accepted. Then we tore the two dollar bill in half and each took a part of it. Now we are forever connected by that magical two-dollar bill. Our other friend thought he made out like a bandit, but we knew otherwise. We knew otherwise.

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November 10, 2006:

Check out this new beat i made. It's dope.