2009 is the Year of Change. and economic uncertainty and anxious futures.

in January we finally moved out of our lockout space in Burbank. no more practice space for the time being, which is just as well since we're focused on wrapping up the EP rather than playing any gigs. at least we're saving money on rent.

the EP is just slightly overdue now. by about half a year or so. it's tentatively titled The Lost and Obscure Artifacts Of An Unknown Band To Be Scrutinized By Asian Americanists In The Distant Future. it will have five songs, maybe four, each representing a time and place in 2008, none of them on our Myspace page. most of the production is currently being done in Duanes apartment, the interim meeting place as Monolidic, Inc., undergoes an extensive auditing and restructuring process.

stay tuned for the next update in 2011.

Duane with his head in the tom.

recording the drums was an intense and grueling experience.

in the background is Wendy the in-house recording engineer. thanks Wendy!

now we're going through the tedious process of reviewing our takes and splicing the drums into a coherent whole. i just put in an order for a Sansamp Bass Driver DI and an Art Pro VLAII Compressor. never mind the fact that i have next to nil audio recording knowledge and that none of us have a clear idea of what attack ratios or variable thresholds or flux capacitating exactly entails. thats completely beside the point. thats not looking at the big picture, kid. venceremos.

we're shooting for late August/early September as our target date for the EP. stay tuned.

no shows as of this moment, my friends. lately weve been getting prepped to head to the studio to record our EP. we're shooting for an end of August date. maybe September? i guess we'll see. details will be forthcoming.

venceremos.

overall our set was alright with with some rough spots here and there, but we're still waiting to review the tapes. i saw a lot of new faces who havent been to our past shows, so thank you for coming out. we also had stickers but forgot to hand em out. the resident band Thee Out Mods rocked the house as well as drawing the moshing fans and the kid who got his t-shirt ripped in a fight and i got beer splashed on me -- so that means someone was doing something right.

below are a few pics. there were more, but the camera was accidentally set to full manual mode so a lot of them came out underexposed. sorry.

Judo Chop @ the 2nd St Jazz Bar in Little Tokyo.

Allen was bathed in a beatific glow while the band played on. note the synchronized movement of heads: "everbody look to their left... NOW!" -- thats discipline.

more shows? soon. we maybe heading into the perilous realm of demo re-mastering next.

venceremos.

we have a show coming up THIS Friday at Judo Chop in Little Tokyo at the 2nd St Jazz Bar.

the cover is $7. we go on at 830 PM. it's Friday, so dont worry about going all the way home -- just drop by after work with your briefcase and patent leather shoes, throw back some boilermakers and rock out.

below is the nifty flyer that Allen designed. i think those are the old tubes that i swapped out from my old bass amp earlier this year. thats what we're all about: reuse, recycle (for band pix) before we dump everything into the storm drain. Monolidic advocates sustainable resources.

other bands on the line-up:
SOULFISH
THEE OUT MODS
THE HOLOGRAMS
GHOST TOWNE

come on by.

we've been spending the last couple weeks working on our timing. we finally started practicing with a metronome and have seen decent improvement. i recently ran into clips of our high school marching band from the year i graduated. i don't understand how they keep time with so much going on. it's hard enough keeping time with three other members of a rock band in a small room. i can't imagine keeping time with 140+ other marching band members on a football field.

two members of Monolidic (Allen, David) are one of the few in Los Angeles that will get one their bikes almost daily to run errands or go to work. Dave's got an awesome foldable (for easy storage and carry) bike and i've got a bike of the fixed gear variety. LA is actually quite bikable if you only need to stay within your own neighborhood. the streets are a lot less treacherous than many cities in that they are a lot less dense and are of a flat terrain. i mean, imagine riding through some of these hazards:

so no excuses, get those sprockets turning!

the thing you do have to really watch for are drivers who are under the false impression that bikers don't have equal rights to the road. LA driver's don't expect to see bikes on the road and drive as such. don't be surprised to hear the horn and be thrown the middle finger of some SUV driver.

and now onto my favorite bike themed music videos of all-time (the last one is not suitable for younger audiences):