love

I’m so bad at telling stories. I can only give facts and then roll around seductively among the tools on the flatbed of a pickup truck. Here’s what I wrote to Marta, from Emma La Reina:

Photo by Tami Berkowits

















Photo by Frank Heer

Thanks to Roman Elsener, collage artist, for assembling this beautiful little piece.

What can I say? My tour is too small! It’s that simple!

Heather’s trusty Jeep (La Jeffa) laden to the gills, snacks from the Park Slope Food Co-op neatly ensconced in Yuri’s back pack, and I with my ultra-marine cynicism painted on the top of my eyes. Yuri resurrects tapes from the seventies and eighties while the landscape between New York City and Boston stretches and gasps, and yawns and aches it’s joints truck by truck by truck. Credit cards make good cheese slicers.

We finally arrive at PA’s Lounge, where we are greeted by the owner and told to set up our stuff in the corner by the video games. We are hungry and perplexed. Then suddenly he, and all the other grizzled veterans of his establishment burst out in a long guffaw. We are then ushered into the actual performance space, where we are greeted by a Christian jazz-fusion band doing sound check.

I find out, much to my delight, that one of my Boston friends is pregnant. (Hurrah to Brad and Jackie!)

We play a fantastic set to an attentive, but intermittently puzzled crowd, among which we are very much pleased to see our old friends from Ad Frank (we played with them at Galapagos), BJ Snowden and her entourage, local music scenesters, some friends of ours, and a woman who is clearly there for only one thing, and one thing only: BJ Snowden!

You all know BJ Snowden, right? That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence.

How’d it get to be so late? Why is it darkness in the sky between the clouds, and between my temples? Why are we getting lost? Why are we driving to Rhode Island? Because we are looking for our beds. And beds they are, lovingly placed there for our late arrival by Ruth Allderige Olsen, her husband Jim, and their three sons Lorin, Noah, and Daniel. Cocoa Puffs on the kitchen counter greet us in the stillness. Individual towels, and mugs are placed on our ingeniously crafted make shift beds on two couches and a floor. Heather, the iron-willed, though somewhat direction-challenged driver of La Jeffa (her Jeep), plummets to sleep.

In the morning we are treated to a lovely breakfast, again, hand-crafted by the family, some great conversation, great home-made Macromedia Director animated videos by Lorin, and then a gorgeous springtime walk in a park. Big thanks! to the Olsens. We can’t wait to drop by again.

Then, it’s off for more knife-edge navigation of the tri-state traffic armpit of the Eastern seaboard. Somehow, once again, our projected travel times are way off and we don’t arrive in Philadelphia until we’ve been scrunched together for eight hours. But we are in good spirits, though wrinkled and hungry. The Manhattan Room opts to treat us to a nice dinner rather than the joke we received from the establishment we played at in Boston, and we’re happy to see a good rock ‘n roll crowd gathered here. We are very impressed with opening band Algebra of Need. Really hard, dirty, but precise and utterly convincing. I’m sure they can go far if only they can keep their fans from messing with their equipment on stage. Again, we surprised ourself with how much energy and love and fun we could burn through on stage in forty minutes, considering how worn out we were at this point. Something about the stage that just erases the bumps and bruises and makes you want to put the arrow to the bow and fire without thinking.

We enjoyed playing, though there were lonely moments by the swag box,

especially when we were waiting in an almost empty bar for the last band to finish their set (they had borrowed Heather’s drums). At two am we finally were able to pack our brave little truck up again and make a beeline for New York City. We dropped Yuri off at his house, and then Heather and Kristofer raced to unload our stuff at the studio in Williamsburg, but we got there far too late to make the 4am Larry Lawrence curfew.

Our 40 hours of mini-tour included: 18 hours of driving, 6.5 hours of watching other bands, 6 hours of sleeping, 4 hours of eating, 3 hours of load-in/load-out, one-hour of walking in the park, and 1.5 hours of performing. Can’t wait to do it again, but MORE next time!

Thank you to all our fans who came out to support us.

Much Love,
Morex Optimo

We had such a great time rocking the Mercury Lounge with you guys Sunday night! Thanks for bringing out your friends, and for smiling so brightly, and singing along when you could, and taking some time out of your hectic lives to celebrate with us. We can’t wait to put on an even better show!

Journalist Roman Elsener is putting together a hot little blog focused on the downtown independent and alternative rock scene. He gave us quite a lovely writeup for our show at Mercury Lounge, April 17th. You can read the writeup here: http://romangame.blogspot.com/2005/04/there-is-rock-on-sunday.html, and check out his blog here: http://romangame.blogspot.com.

Well, it had to happen eventually…someone thinks Heather is “not funny”. She is pacing, sputtering in utter disbelief that someone called one of her puns “not even a good one” and “sophomoric”. Read the full review here. She is currently challenging anyone to take shots on her in goal now as “soccer goalkeeper” is her last stronghold.

Morex Optimo – Beast of Reflection (CD, Broken Hill Music, Progressive pop/rock)
This is a case where the name most definitely fits the band. Imagine mixing Henry Cow and John Vanderslice with David Bowie and Captain Beefheart (?!?)…and you might begin to have a slight idea of what the band Morex Optimo sounds like. Art rockers in the coolest sense of the word, these folks are playing music that truly does not sound like anyone else out there. Many bands could make the claim that their music is unique and different…but how many of those bands actually record music that is credible…? Songs are what make the difference…and there are plenty of absolutely killer tunes to be found on Beast of Reflection. The folks in this band use jagged arrangements and peculiar instrumental phrasings to flesh out their songs. The vocals are slightly subdued and indifferent…yet they fit the music perfectly (the doubled-tracked vocals work wonderfully). Some musical segments are sparse and nervous…while others are rather thick, dark, and intense. Obtuse and peculiar…this is an album for thinking listeners. Cool and curious cuts include “Burkina Faso,” “The Exactly Commensurate Abattoir,” “Kosmonaut,” “Exhaust,” and “Wild Over.” Great stuff. (Rating: 5+)

original review here

Our song Stalling is now in second place as the “Most Original” song of all-time in the entire pop-punk catalog at garageband.com. Now buy our album so we can pay for our upcoming tours! Thanks.

we just happened to be there in the background. this is the second review that uses a curseword! we are really getting somewhere.

http://www.greenpointstar.com/StoryDisplay.asp?PID=3&NewsStoryID=270
to celebrate my inaugural exhibition of single drumsticks at williamsburg’s city reliquary, we played outside where apparently greenpoint journalists roam the “beat” looking for a “scoop”. did I just type “beat”? I did. I did not mean it like that. bad girl. I am going to punish myself. did I just type “pun”ish? nono, make it stop.

city reliquary:
http://www.dhlabsnyc.com/
the city reliquary is at 307 grand st at the corner of havemeyer in williamsburg. check it out, it is one of those notfamous but amazing little new york oddities.

here is my “artist’s” statement:

Over the course of several years of playing the drums, I have experienced the unfortunate but unavoidable problem of broken drumsticks many times over. The broken stick must be discarded (or used to prop up a plant or stir paint), but sometimes its surviving mate can be matched with another stick of the same brand and type.

But drummers are notoriously capricious creatures with short-lived allegiances when it comes to drumsticks, so eventually we are left with many singles varying in brand, thickness, length, type of wood, type of tip, &c. when a stick cannot be matched. Throwing out a perfectly good drumstick, though its mating potential is nil, seems deeply wasteful, barbaric, like burning the wife on the pyre of the dead husband, a kind of drumstick Sati.

So the proprietor of the City Reliquary, Dave Herman, good soul that he is, has allowed me to display my collection of surviving single drumsticks, each of whom has undergone extensive drumstick therapy and none of whom suffer survivor guilt or grief of any type.

The crown jewels of my collection has to be the “unbreakable” synthetic Mainline sticks which I was able to crack either through poor technique or an unfortunately-landed rimshot. Is this false advertising on their part? No, it only served to make me feel powerful and macho and continues to do so each time I look at them.

This is a case where the name most definitely fits the band. Imagine mixing Henry Cow and John Vanderslice with David Bowie and Captain Beefheart (?!?)…and you might begin to have a slight idea of what the band Morex Optimo sounds like. Art rockers in the coolest sense of the word, these folks are playing music that truly does not sound like anyone else out there. Many bands could make the claim that their music is unique and different…but how many of those bands actually record music that is credible…? Songs are what make the difference…and there are plenty of absolutely killer tunes to be found on Beast of Reflection. The folks in this band use jagged arrangements and peculiar instrumental phrasings to flesh out their songs. The vocals are slightly subdued and indifferent…yet they fit the music perfectly (the doubled-tracked vocals work wonderfully). Some musical segments are sparse and nervous…while others are rather thick, dark, and intense. Obtuse and peculiar…this is an album for thinking listeners. Cool and curious cuts include “Burkina Faso,” “The Exactly Commensurate Abattoir,” “Kosmonaut,” “Exhaust,” and “Wild Over.” Great stuff. (Rating: 5+) Reviewer: LMNOP.

http://www.babysue.com/LMNOP-Reviews-January-05.html#anchor938673