Drummer and Texas transplant Simon has been working at the Hollywood Amoeba Music store for a little over a year now.  Recently I caught up with the SoCal Amoebite, whose "best of" lists include AC/DC and Iron Maiden, to ask him about his all time favorite albums and films and the first album he bought (and if he still likes it? - he doesn't). I also talked with him about living in LA as an artist, about his experience working at Amoeba, and what he sees as the future of the music business. Simon also offered his recommendation for a good spot to grab a bite to eat near Amoeba Hollywood.

 

AMOEBLOG: How'd you end up working at Amoeba and what exactly is your job there?
 
SIMON: Well i was working in the service industry, for about a year fixing security systems, when I found Amoeba Music. I didn't like my job at all and always liked working in record stores. I decided to give Amoeba my resume and in three months i was hired.  I was hired April 10th 2006 and i work in the video department, new rock, and on the registers as a clerk.

AMOEBLOG:   When not working at Amoeba what music  or other creative type things do you do?

SIMON:  When not working at Amoeba I play drums in two metal bands:  Lethal Acts Properly Demonstrated and Mercenary Angel.





AMOEBLOG: What makes working at Amoeba unique compared to other jobs you've had?

SIMON: Amoeba is unique due to the fact that everybody is great to work with and there is no stress at all. I've never worked in a job where i can relax around the owners and managers. They are awesome!

In case you have not already seen this really funny (but sadly true) Mad TV skit about the US foreign policy and the ongoing war,  in which Michael McDonald plays Apple founder Steve Jobs and introduces Apple's latest program - the iRack, take a few minutes and watch this brilliant satire that simultaneously pokes fun at Jobs and the Bush administration - but mainly the latter.

In his recommended new book "Tour Smart (and break the band)" - about the real deal of touring as a band or artist - longtime drummer Martin Atkins  (PiL, Killing Joke, Ministry, Pigface, etc.) who these days  runs a record label, invents new types of drums, books bands, and teaches a univeristy course in Chicago at Columbia College about the business of the art - tells it like it is to be on the road in a rock band, or in any band for that matter.  The 592-page book (which is in stores Sept. 1st but availabe online now) exhaustively explores every aspect of touring. The highly informative and entertaiining how-to book is written and edited by Atkins who invited about hundred music biz experts (from bus drivers to bass players) to voice their tales and experiences of life on the road for touring artists. Topics include making contracts, sketching itineries, pros and cons of drug use on the road, the importance of merchandise, sound checks, and dealing with everything from club sound checks to handling radio interviews and driving a tour bus 330 miles in unfamiliar conditions at 4AM after just leaving a gig,  Atkins' guest contributors include Henry Rollins, Steve Albini, and Kevin Lyman of the Vans Warped Tour.  Lee Frasers  of Sheep on Drugs describes the difficulty of being on stage tripping (peaking) on acid playing his guitar, which feels to him like it was made of sponge rubber, and trying to somehow keep in the (onstage) moment.

I recently caught up with author Martin Atkins, via email,  to ask him about the book and also the exhibit  entitled "The Religion of Marketing" that he just wound up in New York City at Fuse Gallery on 2nd Avenue and that featured items that are included in the illustration-heavy "Tour Smart."

New York City: Aug 23rd 2007
You gotta love Amoeba Music recording artist Brandi Shearer  who earlier tonight (Thursday 23rd) treated everyone to cupcakes at her final New York City gig in a series at downtown Lower East Side club the Living Room.  As a thoughtful display of gratitude for her New York supporters the  generous Shearer celebrated her very final night in a month of East Coast gigs  by buying a few dozen cupcakes (from Sugar Sweet Sunshine bakery on nearby Rivington Street) for all who packed into the Ludlow St. venue.  "I bought cup cakes for you all for after the show," she told the delighted Living Room crowd before she and her band, led by legendary guitarist Jim Campilongo and including Richard Hammond on bass, launched into their last offering of the night - another song in the 45-minute set that drew exclusively from the singer/songwriter's brand new album "Close To Dark"  to be released on the newly launched Amoeba Music music label next Tuesday (August 28th).  Fittingly, Shearer's next gig (post album release date) will be back in California at Amoeba Music Hollywood on Saturday, September 1st at 2PM, PST  (Note; that this gig will be streamed online: audio and video).

But for the past few weeks Shearer has been hella busy out here on the East Coast doing an assortment of concerts, radio and TV interviews and performances in Boston, Philly, and New York City where in addition to her Living Room series she also did several other performances including one for ASCAP and another on  New York City's WPIX TV Channel 11.   "I'd never been to New York before recently," she informed me shortly before taking the Living Room stage. "But I like it here."  She said that the New York audiences have been incredibly attentive and well-behaved, especially compared to some of the more rowdy types of crowds that she has witnessed over her rich and varied career.  She recalled the semi-shock she encountered  the first night, three weeks ago, at the Living Room when "In between songs there was not a word, not a word," she said.  "And I am just not used to that. I have strategies for people yelling and fist-fights."  "But  for a complete attentive crowd I have no strategies," she laughed.   But still she had absolutley no problem adjusting to the well behaved audience as proven by tonight's winning performance in which she shone (so did Jim Campilongo who plays the Living Room every Monday) during such songs as the roadhouse blues styled "Oh, Singer" and the sultry and hauntingly beautiful and sad country-soul "Congratulations"  - a song that sounds like it's made to be featured in some movie soundtrack if  ever there was one (You can just imagine it as the perfect backdrop to some sad and moving love story).  Between songs Brandi got a warm response when she told the New York crowd that she herself had become a New Yorker of sorts during  her past few weeks in the Big Apple - proof being that she had mastered how to ride the New York City subway while transporting an instrument.  

Released in theaters a little earlier this year Eddie Murphy's movie "Norbit" - in which, once again, he plays way too many different characters somehow mistakenly thinking that this feat will make up for another not-so-funny comedy - is already out on DVD and I watched it last night - or at least I watched as much of it as I could bear to sit through before hitting the eject button.  Like other comedians and/or actors who have similarly gotten increasingly lamer onscreen over the years (think Ice Cube or  Rob Schneider) Eddie Murphy has lost that certain edge that he once possessed long long ago in his immediate post SNL years. In fact so lame was Norbit that it forced me to go back twenty years to seek out a clip from Murhpy's 1987 Robert Townsend directed live concert film "Raw" - included below.


And speaking of Ice Cube,  who has morphed from homeboy in Boyz In The Hood to cuddly family-man in Are We Done Yet? over his 17 onscreen years, the former NWA member has just announced that he will be starring in the forthcoming movie "Comeback" to be directed by Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst for Dimension Films.   Scheduled for a mid 2008 release "Comeback"  will begin shooting sometime in November.