Meeslepend

Well, the first review of Squeaky's new album is in, and it's written by my mother, a classically trained vocalist and pianist. She is Dutch, having lived in the Netherlands until emigrating to the U.S. in her thirties. Here is what she says:

Hi Harry, Finally, with Ron's help I found your CD and listened to all the songs. They are very intriguing to me . I listened with text exposed so that I could follow all the lyrics! Thank you so much for bringing it over! My favorite one by far is of course Constellation but also Sparrow, Rocky Records and believe it or not Urban Sherpa. Sherpa was a word I never knew until now. The music itself is grabbing, innovative and often to me very surprising with it's beat and shifting beat only to stop in mid-beat or to underscore cynical meanings? Do I have that right?. I felt that the words were well pronounced and that they tended to be close to how they are pronounced in the black culture. I hear never any other bands like this so I am a total novice to it. There is a heartbeat in all the songs that I find grabbing--"meeslepend" would be the Dutch word for it. The audience gets absorbed- even somebody who is not at all familiar with the genre. The instruments all sound good and well-controlled. I think that they are more harmonious than songs in the past. The singing I would describe as passionate recitative. I also like the visual presentation of the page. It is too bad that grandma has not been here to hear you Harry- she would have enjoyed it very much. The musical genes keep on creeping. Thanks for sharing all this. Love, Mom

A lot of people have written reviews of Squeaky records, most of them have been ill-informed and have missed the point. Sometimes it takes a Dutch lady with no experience with rock music whatsoever to really get to the heart of the matter. Thanks Mom!
Incidentally, my mom was reading the lyrics on a website that I set up: the lyrics are here.

H/SQ

Mission Accomplished.

Major combat operations in the new Squeaky album are complete. In our personal war on rock, we declare: "Mission Accomplished". The new album, to be entitled Squeaky, is finally mixed and ready to be mastered. Karl, our tireless (literally! He never gets tired... it's freaky) bass player and engineer, resisted the urge to kill all of us (how many times did he hear, "well.. i want to make just one more change"), did a great job mixing the thing, using nTrack, a peculiar but effective program. The album awaits mastering at Harry's house, and then we get to figure out how the hell we're going to print the damn thing. But any way you slice it, the record is great, it's our finest effort to date, it is our "return to form" disc, heavy on the guitars, light on the instrumental switching. 

Notable on the new album: Karl's string-breaking solo on Our Noise, Danny playing 2 independent drum tracks on Rocky Records, everyone but Harry playing piano at some point, and Danny singing.

You'll just have to wait to hear it, though.

H/Sq

1982 Show

It was great to play at 1982, the former location of Common Grounds, the other night. We hadn't played on that stage since June 8, 2003. Of course, the stage was bigger, monitors were less fried, but it felt really familiar. Hospitals on the Moon and Sir Prize Fighter were both great, in my estimation -their enthusiasm was infectious. 

Can I just state the obvious? It was hot as shit in that club. I could see sweat dripping off of my arm in droves by the third song.

Amy's phone took this picture of us at the show. 

Hopefully, this photo looks like we sound.

If you came to the show, thank you very much. 

H/SQ