societyofgloves.com

You can listen to our new song "Don't Say You Will" on our website, among other places on the Web.

We'll have to abandon this blog at society.deramos.org (as if we paid attention to it recently LOL), but we might bring it back as blog.societyofgloves.com or something good. In the meantime, we have started to microblog - or tweet - at our Twitter page.

Cheers,

Ryan
Society of Gloves

The Society of Gloves

We are recording new material right now.

Three Years of the Society of Gloves

I wish the celebration means we would have lots of new music soon, but sadly, that is not the case. Good news might happen, who knows?

Buzznet

The Society of Gloves is on Buzznet: http://societyofgloves.buzznet.com/

Whatever that means, we'll find out eventually.

New Website, New Music...?

Hopefully. Who knows? Not even the band!

Mutiny Universe Promotes Growth

Check out this video promoting the Mutiny Universe Podcast, featuring new music by The Society of Gloves:

Smashing Pumpkins "American Gothic" EP

Ironically, the last original-recipe (plus or minus D'arcy) Smashing Pumpkins album was a free download called Machina II. It's ironic because the first reborn Smashing Pumpkins (SP2) album - Zeitgeist - has been repackaged so many times, and one of the album's singles has been shilling for "A Sick System" - or is that "A Sync System"? Machina II was an F-YOU to the major record companies, and Zeitgeist has been hijacked by the same industry - a dying industry desperate for money.

Currently, this is Zeitgeist, though I'm missing a few versions on this list: Red Zeitgeist, red book Zeitgeist, yellow Best Buy "Death from Above" Zeitgeist, green UK Zeitgeist, blue iTunes "Stellar" Zeitgeist, violet Target "Zeitgeist" Zeitgeist, silver Best Buy "Death from Above" / "Stellar" / "Ma Belle" / Inside the Zeitgeist documentary Zeitgeist, and now blue "explicit lyrics" iTunes Zeitgeist / American Gothic / music videos bundle. Whew!

With that said, SP2's acoustic-ish Zeitgeist EP American Gothic sounds pretty good. It's almost like an alternate universe where Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin recorded songs for Into the Wild, instead of Eddie Vedder. More accurately, this is what the Adore album might have sounded like with Jimmy Chamberlin and with the original rumor of an acoustic post-Mellon Collie album.

In case you're wondering, this is what a potential Super Zeitgeist would look like. It's not an Ultimate Zeitgeist because the faithful still hope for an epic studio version of "Gossamer." This is basically combining the silver Best Buy reissue album, the Target-only title track, and the new EP:

1. Doomsday Clock
2. 7 Shades of Black
3. Bleeding the Orchid
4. That's the Way (My Love Is)
5. Tarantula
6. Starz
7. United States
8. Death from Above
9. Bring the Light
10. (Come on) Let's Go!
11. Neverlost
12. Stellar
13. Ma Belle
14. For God and Country
15. Pomp and Circumstances
16. Zeitgeist
17. Rose March
18. Again, Again, Again (The Crux)
19. Pox
20. Sunkissed

Super Zeitgeist is too large to fit a standard 80-minute CD. You can buy a DRM-free mp3 album of Zeitgeist at Amazon.com, otherwise the bundle is for sale at iTunes . You'll have to track down the bonus tracks "Death from Above," "Stellar," "Ma Belle," and "Zeitgeist" elsewhere.

Society of Gloves Blog on Hiatus

Happy First Day of Saturnalia! The Society needs to celebrate the holidays and not blog, so this blog is going to be on hiatus until the new year. I really haven't had anything new to write about as of late, and I don't remember any recent dreams.

Here's the last episode available on Hulu of The Office. The episode is called "Business School":

See you next year!

Society Surveys on Hiatus

I guess it's a wise choice to put the bulk of the DeRamos.org Network's daily features on hold for the holiday season, as (1) I don't have the time and (2) Web traffic is probably low this time of year - with the exception of online merchants.

With that said, our socio-politico-economic surveys at Survey Sunday will be on hiatus for the holiday season. I don't know if people will do these types of surveys for this time of year, but we'll be back with a vengeance in time for the primary season for the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections.

And of course, we'll have some new Society songs in the coming year!

With that said, here's the last episode of The Office before the Strike finally sunk in, or at least before the holiday hiatus - but likely the former. The episode is called "The Deposition":

Chord du Jour on Hiatus

Given the busy nature of the holidays, and the time it takes to create a daily music lesson, I've put Chord du Jour on hiatus...as in, I hate to do this but that's what I need to do. On the bright side, we've gone through two complete cycles of all twelve keys - chords AND scales.

While you digest that info, please stick around and watch this episode of The Office, called "Survivor Man":

Rest assured, I'll be putting some of that music theory to practice during that hiatus while I'm scoring a film called Elan Vital.

And that's sort of how those two otherwise unrelated things - music lessons and film postproduction - tie into this usually unrelated thing - a band called The Society of Gloves. It's all related.

In fact, it's absolutely relative.

Filler

The Holidays always become the Holy Daze...
I have yet to do another podcast (it is past due)...
The Elan Vital score is slowly coming along...
Congratulations to Eddie Vedder and the other Into the Wild composers for their Golden Globe nomination for best score...
Here's an episode of The Office called "Branch Wars":

This One's for Ike Turner

It's music legend that in 1951, Ike Turner and his band discovered guitar amp distortion - an essential element in rock and roll - by accidentally dropping a speaker from the roof of the band's car...or a story to that effect. Rock music salutes you, Mr. Turner!


As a non-sequitur...here's an episode of The Office called "Local Ad":

Ike Turner photo credit: Masahiro Sumori.

"The Office" of Gloves

I dreamt that I was part of the cast of the NBC show The Office, but it wasn't a show. It felt like a real office, and I felt like I had a real white-collar job, but the whole situation was funny like the show. Steve Carell played the role of the boss, but his name wasn't Michael Scott. He was instead named Butch Reed, like the wrestler.

Anyhow, here's an episode of The Office for your reference:

Acting Conspiracy

I had a dream where I was part of a "conspiracy" to trick someone to follow their dreams. Sad premise, I know. The first run of the act was great, as I wasn't aware that I was playing a role. Then we tried it again and again, and then it felt like an act. Then we tried to ad lib, and that was a disaster.

Since it's the holiday shopping season, here's that infamous Saturday Night Live Digital Short, just in time for Christmas:

Scoring a Film

I've been writing and recording the soundtrack (10-14 songs' worth!) for a movie called Elan Vital. You can read more about the scoring process at the Elan Vital postproduction (and beyond!) web log. Cheers!

To keep yourselves occupied, here's a badass Natalie Portman rapping for an SNL Digital Short:

My Friends

I had a dream I was hanging out with my dear friends since high school, and it was Christmas. They all spoke with different accents (than usual), and so did I . I had a Western movie cowboy accent. And there was this road trip from Washington state to Alaska.

While you digest that, check out SNL's "People Getting Punched Just Before Eating":

Tom Hanks, Pop Star

This is funny, bizarre, and starring Tom Hanks:

An Unanswerable Riddle?

In this dream, there were two words. One word was clone; the other word had the same meaning as clone, started with the letter c, was five letters long, but had the letter m in it.

Impossible.

Note to Self

I keep a minicassette recorder near my bed to record ideas conveniently, especially when I wake up and need to do so. I've done this to record my incoherent dreams in great detail. However, last night I woke to and record my dream in such an intelligible whisper, that I have to do a note to self.

Note to self: No matter how groggy and half-conscious, try to enunciate while recounting a dream.

I remember the content of the dream a little bit. It involved Star Wars, as well as a reality show with two households under one roof - the consequences thereof.

Not "Ishmael"

So I had this dream about a wise, telepathic shark in an aquarium in a small college in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The teacher was a great white named Voldermor, like Harry Potter's Voldermort without the -t, otherwise Voldermar (-mar alluding to the sea) was also used in the dream. The student - much like the Alan Lomax characters in Ishmael and My Ishmael - was a seeker of knowledge, and the two had Socratic dialogues about the meaning of a fictionalized Tolstoy's War and Peace - in the dream it was called Troyovski's (it was spelled that way!) Life and Death.

Somewhere along the way, the student helped the teacher escape the college to his spaceship, which also contained a large enough water-filled aquarium for the shark. The student, who I suspect was yours truly, was definitely happy that there was a glass partition between the telepathic shark and myself.

A shark's a shark, isn't it? Okay, maybe the dream wasn't long enough for me to warm up to the non-gorilla, Ishmael-like character...but the shark was named Voldermor...so buyer beware.

"Elan Vital" Soundtrack

I have a good feeling that my part of the Elan Vital soundtrack/score will have enough material to fill an entire album. While being in the middle of constantly writing, recording, and viewing the locked picture track is fulfilling - I can't wait until it's all done and look back with an even greater feeling of satisfaction.

More Unintentional Symbolism

Someone dressed up like my brother (and band mate in the Society) began to electrocute that area near my right shoulder and probably tried to drain some life-force or something. Anyhow, I knew that the demon wasn't my brother and I let out a war cry and began to attack.

And that's when I woke up. The war cry sounded like a strange wheeze in real life.

Oh...and last night's dream, I came up with a stand up comic routine that involved buying 16 to 20 tacos. Apparently, I was also in high school.

End transmission.

Society Survey #7: First Amendment

We have a new survey that covers a fraction of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: The Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, and Freedom of Speech. Please take this quick survey, and we should reveal some results on a future Results Thursday. Thanks.

Also, if I have nothing to write about tomorrow, I'll tell you about last night's dream - one where I fought a demon.

Emperor Pie Man

I dreamt of a Star Wars spoof on The Simpsons, with Homer's Pie Man persona ruling the galaxy. Woo-hoo!!!

Waking Up after Waking Up

I had a dream that I came up with a melody so irresistible, I had to wake myself up and hum it into the microcassette recorder near my bed. And so I did that.

Realizing that was still part of the dream, I woke up again to record the melody. Upon listening to the melody...it's not that great, and it's probably lifted from another musician's work. This whole episode was a good effort, though, if I do say so myself.

The Technician

A quick one: Check out The Technician and his phat beats on MySpace.

Hospital Food

I'm obviously writing about the dreams of previous nights because I have nothing new to report: No new tracks close to completion, no new records to review, no nothin'. So here goes:

I was in a hospital, and the hospital food consisted to sweets and deserts - chocolate donuts, cake with chocolate frosting, cake with white frosting, and bread pudding conveniently packaged Jell-O pudding cups.

I watched House last night, so that explains the hospital part...

Disney Like Cake

That was one of the dreams I had last night. Disney Like Cake. It had nothing to do with Walt Disney's empire, and the word disney was a common noun with a meaning that's since been lost. It made total sense during the dream, however - but what nonsensical subconscious storyline doesn't at the time broadcast?