thetroublewithneith

[thetroublewithneith]

[thetroublewithneith]

[thetroublewithneith]

[thetroublewithneith]

our first EP and first album are out on itunes

[thetroublewithneith]

Sometimes

  the Trouble With Neith came to my door. All 50 copies. I was so happy. Mom asked if she could give them away at work. I told her I needed them to give to those who were going to the record release party but I could give her a few if she wanted to sell them. She ended up selling one but the best part was despite that everyone at her job knows our sound. Only complaint was from mom. At the end of Sometimes Jay screams "Mother fucker!!!!". She mentions this to me then goes "Aye Natalia why he say dat?" and then giggles. Other than that mom is a huge fan haha. Sometimes by Natalia McCarty

[thetroublewithneith]

Somethin' Changed

the Trouble With Neith came to my door. All 50 copies. I was so happy. Mom asked if she could give them away at work. I told her I needed them to give to those who were going to the record release party but I could give her a few if she wanted to sell them. She ended up selling one but the best part was despite that everyone at her job knows our sound. Mom works at a high school. The day she brought it in it was a half day. She showed the principal and he thought it was so awesome he decided to play it in the speakers throughout the school. Mom warned him that there was "many bad words" and he told her not to worry he was only gonna play snippets of the songs in between classes (instead of the bell) so he did that. Im assuming it was the song Something's Changed because mom said by the end of the day many staff members were humming to themselves the intro (na na na na na na, na na). When the kids left though the staff still had a full day so since the students were gone the principal played the entire cd. I was so shocked! Mom told me so many people loved it and I got messages from some staff members about how much they love our sound.  - Natalia McCarty on Somethin' Changed

[thetroublewithneith]

I sent this to patric so I thought you should read it if you wanted to

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Natalia McCarty

 to meshow details 2:10 AM (45 minutes ago) 

So I dreamt that we all went to Puerto Rico for a vacation. We decided to stop into the Hard Rock Cafe in Old San Juan because I know people who work there. I introduce you guys to Anmerie and tell her that this is the band I play with. She got really excited and informs me that this Latin Rock band called La Ley is reuniting and the opening band cancelled and would really love it if we could take the spot. We dont have any of our  gear (we're on vacation) so she asks the owner and he says we can use the instruments on display so like Nappy was playing a bass from some famous rock person I cant remember, Joe played Eric Claptons guitar, I think you had Ringo's drum kit, and Jay had I THINK Pete Townshends guitar ( I know either Nappy or Jay was playing an instrument from the Who I just cant remember that part of the dream very well). Anyways, we go and the place is packed. The guy hosting the reunion show is the drummer from the band Mana (famous Mexican rock band, like Mexico's version of U2). The guy is a demon. No joke, I watch him play drums all the time and I am constantly in awe. He is having so much fun and hes all over the place. Anyways, we perform and we rock the fuck out of Hard Rock. I honestly dont even remember La Ley performing. The next part of the dream I remember is we are all sitting in the back eating and drinking and the durmmer from Mana is sitting there with his gf and he is giving us advice about the business and stuff but the one thing that stands out is what he says to you. (Hence the reason Im telling you this dream). He looks at you from across the table and points and goes "You my man, you are on fire! I have never seen a man play drums with such power and love every minute of it! You are playing your heart out there man dont ever lose that you are a rare talent and they need to have more drummers like you out there!!" and then I remember standing up and then pointing to you almost yelling at you. "You see!!! You see!!!!! I dont ever want to hear you say you arent that good! One of the best drummers in the world just told you that you are amazing! Believe it now!!" Then I woke up. LOL. So that dream spoke to me a lot. It told me how I really feel about your talent (which I already knew but that just validated it) and it told me that you need to hear that. That you need to be told you are an amazing drummer and that you need to believe it. So there you go. I hope that reminds you just how awesome a drummer you are. You are on fire! There ya go, have a good day at work Natalia

[thetroublewithneith]

Death + Dying (2005 ?)

[thetroublewithneith]

Mr. J, Thanks for the record. Just arrived today. Track 15 ("Sometimes") just began. So technically my review is about 5 songs premature. BUt I wanted to fire this off to you before I got too tired and while everything was still fresh. The album is really really good J. Really truly. It's full of character and color, and as i've come to expect from you, a healthy dose of surprises.... some of which have me shaking my head at the way you've defied my musical expectations yet still not disengaged me at all, others have me laughing, and still others just make me wonder...and i mean wonder in the mystical sense, not the vernacular quip, "it makes me wonder". And these strong qualities are what stirs me. They're part of what I love about music. You're doing something right, man, and I'm feeling it. Not that I've heard all there is to hear in the wide world of music, but from what I have digested, I can say there is nothing quite like your stuff. It's golden, rich, and bizarre like a dusty antique shop from the future, say 2111. J. I got distracted from this email.... I went on a wikipedia bender, reading about comets and such..... there's some interesting stuff going on in our solar system tonight, and a NASA spacecraft in position to check it out... couldn't resist the encyclopedic expedition. But I kept the album playing, and the rest of what I have to say regarding your album is no longer (as I stated in the beginning of this email) premature. This album is great. Congrats man. If the satisfaction of completing yet another work of art is not enough to sate, may the gods of musical recognition shine their light upon you and your pursuits! Thanks for the album and thanks for the liner note shout out. Whatever it is that earned that thanks, you're very, very welcome.

Mr. Seth.

[thetroublewithneith]

thejsenyc:

we are having a trouble with neith release show @ Arlenes. Pay the cover get a free cd. there. 2.5.11

[thetroublewithneith]

thejse:

Say Say

This song is about Andrea's quote book.

[thetroublewithneith]

"SFC was a song I used to jam out on all the time with Mike Finnerty when we rented out that haunted basement down on Bergen Street by Atlantic Avenue. It was so fucking cold down there, and the ceilings were easily 20 feet high… in the basement. it was so weird and creepy. Some nights, you could faintly hear other bands rehearsing, presumably a few buildings over. On quiet nights you would be able to hear whispers by people who weren’t really there- the air was so thick with them that when you’d walk up the rickety bannister-less steps you would swear a hand was about to reach our from under and in-between the open air steps and grab your ankle.

I remember showing the chord progression to Justin Law once and then jamming out with Justin and Mike and just thinking (Why aren’t we all in the same band? This sounds brilliant!) Still, I played a demo to Mike about a year or two later and he not only didn’t remember the song, but he told me “Bro, you know I love you…” (which in Mike-Speak always meant an insult was coming) “but I really don’t like this”

it *ALMOST* bummed me out, but then I played it to him again the next time he came by -one night after I had been drinking at Sidecar, and my hunch proved correct: “This is awesome!”

Same fucking track.

Natalia said the strings that permeate the track sound like they were recorded off of a television- and while I can’t actually recall where I got them from, I think she may have been right as I’ve always had several tape, micro-casette and digital voice recorders on my person.  This was also the first track where I assembled my own drum kit by recording and sampling a snare, a tom, a kick, a floor tom etc. Justin Law was doing the same thing at the time back in the haunted basement. I might have even stolen a drum hit from one of his recordings. I really don’t remember anymore. I then programming each hit, by hand, on a computer. There was no click-track or grid of any kind used on this track.

Back when I lived with Justin Law was when I lived with Music. We lived, ate and breathed it. We probably had the most hipster-like bromantic existence but neither one of us would have ever admitted it then. We’d go to concerts together (we saw Neil Young at the Garden, Sonic Youth do “Daydream Nation” in Brooklyn, we saw Wilco together a couple of times and the Eels with strings + the Magnetic Fields at Town Hall, just to name a few) We’d hit up the bars on 5th avenue in Park Slope and then come back and watch concert DVDs (like Dinosaur Jr. Pavement and Jeff Tweedy) in the living room while drinking more beers from Eagle Provisions downstairs.  I remember drunkenly blasting ‘Holiday’ by the Magnetic Fields one night from my Bose Sound Dock and singing along while rolling around on the floor. Funny as it sounds, that really turned him onto Stephin Merritt. And he wound up buying 69 love songs and a couple of their rare EPs after. After I got him into the Eels, he, in turn, got me into Yeasayer and John Vanderslice, who we also went to see with St. Vincent and Beach House @ Mercury Lounge. Sometimes we’d stay up all night listening to Pavement and Elliot Smith records on vinyl.

Fuck, one time we even smoked a bowl and I synched-up Echoes (off of Pink Floyd’s Meddle album) to Space Odyssey 2001. If you haven’t heard about this, allow me to be the first- I was reading this book called “Saucerful of Secrets; a Pink Floyd Odyssey” and it briefly discussed how Stanley Kubrick asked the band to contribute to a predominate part of the soundtrack. I don’t know exactly how much he wanted them to do, but I do know this - the song “echoes” is about 23 minutes long, as is “Jupiter and beyond the infinite”, the last chapter of the film. After Dave shuts down Hal and the screen goes black that title screen comes up on the screen. To synch it correctly you should have your cd player set with ‘Echoes’ on pause. Time it so the letters “Jupiter and beyond the infinite” appear simultaneously with the first “ding” in the song. Once you get it matched up, the sun flares and footsteps and EVERYTHING will coincide perfectly. The drama, the suspense, the wonderment.

the ending of the film actually makes more sense with the Pink Floyd score.

A saw a scan of the original lyrics to Echoes online which were even more about space. I believe the line about an albatross floating slowly across the sky originally referred to a floating monolith.

This is all what I have come to believe over the years, but what I know to be the truth is this: Pink Floyd turned Kubrick down. Roger Waters had been quoted as saying that this was one of the few career moves he ever made that he “truly regretted”. Space Odyssey 2001 was released in 1968, and the album Meddle was released in 1971.

If I were to do an interview with Roger Waters, as Conan O’Brien did in late 2010, I would have definitely asked him about the echoes soundtrack. However, Conan O’Brien is such a pussy he did the whole interview without even uttering the words “Pink Floyd”

I also have a copy of Nick Mason’s fabulous book about his experiences in Pink Floyd titled “Inside Out” where he reveals that the band used to rehearse in front of a projector, and jam along to art films.

Of course, if this is true, I imagine Pink Floyd could be sued by Kubrick’s estate. So I can understand why now, some 40 years later, there has still been no confirmation that it’s true. However, I assume friends of the band probably know the truth, and from this word-of-mouth “getting out” I presume some exceptional stoner over-achievers attempted to look for more synchronizations.

I personally think the Dark Side of the Moon and the Wizard of Oz are just coincidence. And again referencing Nick Mason’s book- the haphazard methods used to create the album would have proved doing a whole album synch-impossible.

But back to my song, SFC One night, Justin and I agreed to do a lyrics-writing workshop after dinner so we cracked open some IPAs and brought down our notepads and we mulled over Billy Corgans’ former process of typewriting lines and then changing one word and re-typing the line over and over until it no longer resembled what it originally was but still somehow sounded and felt like it.

the song I was using this process with was SFC- which stood for So Fucking Cute I wanted to do my usual love song but with a spin, so I decided to give “cute” the duality of it’s definition by applying it to heterosexual endearment and actually wrote about my severely handicapped brother, also named Justin.

We talked about poetry and wrote some haikus and agnostic poems and used acronyms and everything. We even did what Bowie did in his coke-fueled studio days, when you write an abstract poem and then rearrange every line randomly. Likewise, Justin showed me a few of his devices as well.

So in SFC when I sing, “and you can’t care about me or anyone with seams. “ it definitely ‘sounds’ like a love song, but is, in actuality about a disability that prevents my brother from emoting.  Anyone with seams is merely a play on words of the phrase “anyone it seems” which was a bit of the billy corgan-ism-ing I mentioned earlier as the line originally said “you don’t care about me or anyone it seems”

The song I wrote in the living room that night found it’s new home in the trash bin. SFC is a keeper though. It’s an unusual tuning too. I think I picked it up from the “Mellon Collie” tablature book when I was in High School.

I’d love to have walked out of there thinking I made justin’s life better as he seemed genuinely excited to take on these new processes to his writing, but when he played me his newest song before I moved out his lyrics were covered in weak sauce. Sorry justin!

Sometimes, between all the rabid music consumption we’d actually make a little together, but mostly we just talked about music and the processes of making it. We had a surprisingly large amount in common for two strangers who coincidentally lived a wall apart from one another for a few years. We were both valedictorians of our High Schools too.

I remember him telling me (his first winter in Brooklyn) that he had never seen snow before. That really stuck with me.”

Poindexter Twinklebottom on S.F.C.

#smokin joe haines #jay sharp #justin law #natalia mccarty

[thetroublewithneith]

“Sometimes” was recorded up in Ric’s apartment when I lived right below him in park slope. That is, before me and my friend Mike totally trashed it and I got evicted. Ric and I had been playing around Brooklyn and Manhattan for a couple of years and this was one of our staples. We even started shows with it if I recall correctly. this was back before we started calling ourselves A Black Tie Affair. I remember Ric was so conscious of me recording a bass or more than one guitar part on anything. It was so difficult trying to explain to him that live shows and records are two different beasts. Even his favorite two person bands, the Black Keys and the White Stripes still used guitar overdubs and I remember Jack White saying in an interview that every White Stripes album (except for one) had a bass tracked, albeit turned very low into the mix so it was nearly unnoticeable. That being the case, there as so many fantastic guitar arrangements that are missing from this recording. Maybe when we get a permanent second guitarist on board I can really jam out on the bridge section in the middle. This was also the first song Nappy recorded bass on, about a year after Ric and I stopped talking. That was funny too, because he evicted me and I moved into a house around the corner with Jared Sochinsky and his little brother. So we still used to see him around Park Slope and we’d just pretend we didn’t know one another. Life is so weird like that sometimes.”

—Poindexter Twinklebottom on Sometimes 

[thetroublewithneith]

I remember we wrote and recorded the Stupid Me in one day and I took audio books of Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O Donnell and another lesbian (Martha Stewart?) and overdubbed them all at once really muffled with a low-pass filter in the background over the choruses. I don't have it on my imac now, but I think it should still exist on one of my hard drives where the power supply burnt out when I left it on when I went to Puerto Rico in 2004.

Poindexter Twinklebottom on the Stupid Me

[thetroublewithneith]

Further From You Now Than I Ever Was Before. I'm gonna to be honest with you. I love the Smiths. Always have. Some of their songs have really long and seemingly pretentious titles like "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", "There is a Light That Never Goes" and "I Started Something That I Couldn't Finish" but they never come across as such- they just add to the melodrama that is Morrissey. So that's where the title "Further From You Now Than I Ever Was Before" comes from. The title is so long it appears on the back of the record as "Further From You Now..." because it didn't fit on the back of the CD Case. The song started out with a chord progression Jared had. It's so old, it might have even been something that Mike DiFillipi had recorded on a demo with him. I'll have to remember to ask him the next time I see him. The upstroke/ska part in the middle and the fabulous last verses were all written by me and that's why we play it at every LoveMuffins show and don't think of it as a cover or anything. The song is actually a ghost story. If you were to look at the lyrics sheet, it simply reads like a love story- as if it were about a love lost, but it's actually a metaphor for a life lost: That whole "I remember walking through you/i could see one million faces" was about the ghost of Kevin Nolan's brother- who had died of cystic fibrosis at the age of seventeen. Kevin Nolan was the founding bass player in the Stereolites, back when we were still called the Dropouts. We used to rehearse in his flat on the corner of 77th street and 17th avenue for hours and hours and hours. 8 hour days were the norm for us. With only a break for pizza or burgers in-between. Kevin kept a space heater on his brothers' favorite seat year-round because whoever would sit in his brothers chair would freeze, in the winter months it was to the point where your breath would become visible. I had 'something' flick at my ears, nudge me and tug at my shirt several in that house too. I could never quite urinate properly there either, I'd be paralyzed by fear and the overwhelming sense of an angry presence looking down it's nose at you. Not to mention we saw a door slam, and a 9-volt battery fly across the room all by themselves in that house. Kevin told me later that his brother and he would often throw batteries at each other when they would take acid trying to hurt one another but it would just make them laugh. Yup, the strange kids you meet in Bensonhurst. One night Kevin went to bed in his room and I don't know if I was passed out on the floor or sleeping on the couch or about to go home (I lived just up 76th street) but I could hear Kevin talking. The next day I asked him about it and he told me, in his own words, that he often drank himself into oblivion and would then have conversations with his dead brother, in an attempt to keep him alive. Well, he was definitely still alive in that house and my whole band knew it. I don't talk to Kevin Nolan anymore but I often think of him and that house.

Poindexter Twinklebottom on Further From You Now Than I Ever Was Before

#smiths #that joke isn't funny anymore

[thetroublewithneith]

Sad Tomato. This song is about Sarah. Sarah is the Sad Tomato. Before Mike and I were friends, I was friends with his sister. In fact, Kevin Sacco knew Mike from school, but it was really his sister Sarah that was his "best friend". She was super smart- and super depressive. She used to be really cool with us all and come to all the Stereolites shows. We had a blast when she rented out a bar on halloween in Astoria one year and Mike dressed up as the Pope, and she had a great talk with me about insight and understanding. I told her how crowds need to be moved and rocked at shows and the downside to seated venues (when people sit, they forget what live entertainment is, and they stare at you the way they would a television- Complete with nose picking, yawning and supporting their faces up by their wrists) . bmn94-=2. Whoops. Dropped my keyboard. Sarah even did coke with us on my 23rd birthday (which I wound up writing another song about, called 'the Sandman' with Cereal Hero Killer)I don't really know what happened between us, but their family has more problems, and more money, curiously enough, than any other family I've ever known and somewhere down the line she started being a right bitch toward me. I remember when her and Mark got engaged, we spent new years at her rental in Astoria- and I remember being so happy for her when she found a publisher for her first book. She moved to L.A. to be with Marcus and his work (he is a paparazzo) I even remember her asking me to send her my A Black Tie Affair [EP] when she came back to NYC to visit. I did, and I never heard back from her. That may have been the last time I spoke with her, when she asked to hear my music. She said she'd write me a little blurb, you know being the writer that she is and all. It wasn't long after that she announced her wedding on facebook and all of my friends got an invitation but not me. Removing her as a friend on facebook was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I still don't know what happened there but it sure makes for a better story of the song. "Life. Loss. Learn" are the last three words of the song that were omitted when we recorded it.

Poindexter Twinklebottom on Sad Tomato 

[thetroublewithneith]

Ah, Death + Dying. This song immediately takes me back to 2003 or 2004. I was still hanging out a lot with Matt "Matt in the orange hat" Page. After following Tori Amos around relentlessly for a couple of years (and eventually having dinner with her band at Nobu) I began to see the cracks in Matt's facade. In all honesty I wrote this song about the 'sun spinning a'round' his 'crazy head'. The lines about the waves crashing over you while your relatives watch was about my boyfriend at the time. The song kind of became a conglomerate of the two. There is a great deal of talk about cancer in it too, and as I age, so do my friends and loved ones and this is really the worst time ever on our planet to be a human being -because of cancer. I don't know if it's McDonalds or reheating things in plastic, or poland spring bottles or depleted uranium being used in Iraq, or oil spills in Greenpoint, or the amount of nuclear tests we did in the 50's everywhere (new data just came out about staggering numbers, Google it) not just in the desert… I mean, it's probably a combination of all of these things. But as a barely 30 year-old loved one had to go under the knife today with life threatening cancer, the song has definitely become more profound and significant to me over time. It's not hard for me at all to connect to the proper emotion when I perform it live. I was just listening to a recording from 2005, the first time I ever performed it, I don't even think Natalia had heard the song yet then. It's so cute how at the end of our show she asks "Who wants to hear him sing a song all by himself?" and it was nice to see no one objected. What was so cool about that show, (other than it being my birthday and that we made a couple of hundred dollars) was that Glenn Mohre joined us on bass. He decided he was going to do the gig with us (then it was just Natalia and Mike and I) the night before. This was super fun because there was cocaine involved. Glen learned the basic chord progressions to about five of our songs but we just wanted to smoke pot and run around like kids so we did just that. We couldn't convince Natalia to snort any blow but she did crawl around on her elbows and knees after smoking some weed with the boys so we were all satisfied. Glenn promised he would be back over at Mike's crib (I practically lived there in those days) in the AM to learn the rest of the songs (on the day of the show!) and of course he overslept. We thought we were going to have to soldier on without him, and I was to have no hard feelings (because hey, coke is a helluvadrug) but he finally returned one of our calls right when we were heading out to Ditmars to catch the subway: Glen was on his way to the gig! He just winged it, live and on two feet. He did a pretty decent job too. I just listened to the whole show again not too long ago. It was the first time I remember Nat and I were singing and harmonizing at a professional level. We had done a whole bunch of shows at CBGB's 313 gallery prior and often had somewhat disastrous results (our cover of Dido's white flag anyone?) So my birthday in 2005 was a benchmark for the band. I was very saddened to see Mike leave us a few years later… and then rejoin… and then leave again, and then come back- only to leave again for good. And I guess that's really what Death + Dying is all about. Unexpected results. Cycles. Rejuvenation. Regret. Life.

Poindexter Twinklebottom on Death + Dying