Women We Haven’t Met Yet
or
I’m not gay, I am just from California

Port­landic Adventures

“Ohh you two do the weird stuff!” I inter­nally men­tion to myself amidst con­ver­sa­tion with tall skinny blonde just pre­vi­ously heck­led by over­sized men in more over­sized cloth­ing and her post LA boyfriend well adorned with Metal music cul­tural stylings. Vivid images flash through my head like vision’s of flogs and leather straps dance around my head.

It almost felt like I was get­ting close. The ulti­mate “in” you can say with peo­ple and the nightlife com­mu­nity. Like being part of the coke crowd at the party. That time when the host and a select few slyly slip into the shad­ows and gather into some sort of iso­lated bed­room and nasally inhale some Colom­bian Gold. You have to be pretty com­fort­able with some­one to expose them to such a dirty secret. Those cer­tain things that peo­ple do and are proud of or enjoy but do not want to share with the world.

Of course you have the other say nor­mal party guests maybe awk­wardly danc­ing to that one remix of that one song as some DJ takes over the home computer’s Pan­dora Sta­tion to enlighten any­one in audi­ble range with their well sat­u­rated knowl­edge of music. Unknow­ing of the con­sor­tium just nearby com­mit­ting casual felonies nearby in the com­fort of somebody’s home. But it is not all about the rapid con­sump­tion of an and all mind alter­ing sub­stances. As they pass the hun­dred dol­lar bill to you, you can smoothly say “No I’m cool.” and you know what. You are cool. Because you are in that room wit­ness­ing what oth­ers are not privy to. But then you are also think­ing in the back of your mind that the Taco Bell is drug test­ing and that Shift Man­ager posi­tion is look­ing very promis­ing. Then you kind of con­sider tak­ing the hun­dred dol­lar bill and sprint­ing because that would be a great way to pay for your elec­tric bill and get at least a weeks worth of Crunch Wrap Supremes.

Three weeks, one gig, no pay, and still no job. Still I become slightly ego­tis­ti­cal as another DJ approached me as I was adjust­ing knobs and push­ing but­tons in the ever present attempt to make two songs sound as one. Intro­duced him as some­body the res­i­dent DJ of the very venue I was per­form­ing at. I guess he casu­ally asked me for lesson’s as I ego­tis­ti­cally blurted that out later on in other conversations.

Though it is only skin deep as I feel that my progress has slowed. I feel like that out there on the same Fri­day night there is some­one else sit­ting at home work­ing even harder, com­pos­ing bet­ter songs, and see­ing bet­ter results. Skill­fully avoid­ing such dis­trac­tions as one of your high school flings post­ing hot bikini pho­tos and you falling into a self depre­ci­at­ing spi­ral of what if’s and try­ing to cre­ate some coy com­ment to spark inter­est. But of course it could be some­thing less awk­ward yet more impres­sive as find­ing out about a site ded­i­cated to Tom Sel­l­eck, Water­falls, and Sand­wiches. One hour wasted. This damn song isn’t going to cre­ate itself. Curse you Sel­l­eck, curse you!

But back to the night­club and find­ing what all of us writ­ers, musi­cians, and artists seem to crave. Inspi­ra­tion. Though being rapidly com­mented on being “Good”, “Awe­some”, and “Killer” is great but still not get­ting the job done. Though hav­ing a short but sassy con­ver­sa­tion with one of your musi­cal heroes does help. Think­ing that he (and his band) are in their mid thir­ties and have wives and kids and such respon­si­bil­i­ties. It is my turn to live in a van on end­less tours and drink cheap beer in a dif­fer­ent city every night and have young awk­ward girls scream “I want to marry your beard” at me.

But I think it all starts with David Bowie and my new­found inter­est in Dutch funkadelic bands.

To be continued…

Side note:

I’ve been work­ing on a Kamele Demo with a few remixes and a cou­ple orig­i­nal tracks on it.

I also have a weekly rock DJ gig at Dirty in PDX. The weekly is called Con­flict.
Just about too busy to blog ran­dom­ness. Keep posted though.

Played a three hour set for Fables By Bar­rie as Cap­tain Kamele on Sat­ur­day which is my last week­end in town before I start my trav­els North to Portland.

Cap’n Kamele is get­ting nos­tal­gic about his old days in the fleet and DJing cou­ple live sets at Fables By Bar­rie grand open­ing cel­e­bra­tion. This may turn out to be another appear­ance full of debauch­ery and match­ing outfits.

Kamele dab­bles in come live gui­tar dur­ing the set.

Kamele def­i­nitely plans on recre­at­ing the mix from the live set and dis­trib­ut­ing it out among the inter­net. Stay tuned for that.

Kamele is per­form­ing two upcom­ing shows now.

4/24: The Ruby Room w/ The Pol­ish Ambas­sador & Han­ni­bal Selec­tor
5/1: Fables by Bar­rie grand opening

Check out Kamele’s lat­est mix as he talks about him­self in the third person.

Kamele’s Mini Mix

Also check out Ample Mammal’s (aka The Pol­ish Ambas­sador) lat­est mix.

After­wards Kamele and WeAreAroundYou will be relo­cat­ing to Port­land to work on a full length album and a book titled “How to Kill Your­self and Live to Tell About it”.

Kinda happy that Kamele’s first show got a lit­tle press cov­er­age.

Also still work­ing at The Ruby Room sling­ing $1 Draft Beers:

The Pol­ish Ambas­sador and friends in space.

Cap­tain Kamele and the nefar­i­ous Han­ni­bal Selec­tor are open­ing up for The Pol­ish Ambas­sador on Sat­ur­day April 24th.

$10 at the door or $5 with a Face­book RSVP

It was Sun­day morn­ing I think. I was sit­ting in a hot tub watch­ing the sun come up drink­ing my last round of vodka shots before fig­ur­ing out how I should start the day or end it. I was pretty amped but every­one else in the tub was naked and mak­ing out after I put on The Pol­ish Ambassador’s Pan­dora sta­tion. So I got out and found my clothes and hopped in the South­ern Coach which was still parked at The Ruby Room and headed down­town to my studio.

I just kinda laid there in a daze lis­ten­ing to the sound of high­way traf­fic and won­der­ing whether I should muster up the strength to fight this headache or just keep lying here and accept the pains of being a man after becom­ing a beast. It must of been about 5pm so I decided to go to the Ruby Room after stop­ping to say hello to my two friends who work at Dun­geon Servi­tus. After drink­ing some more at the Ruby I headed to Pokez to res­cue my friends from an irate domini­trix. We con­tin­ued to imbibe at my stu­dio and we watched High Fidelity. My phone rang and I real­ized that Bul­let wanted to go to SXSW in an hour. I wasn’t too sure if we are even going put appar­ently it was a go.

They showed up in about and hour and I just grabbed a cou­ple things and threw my couches in the back of the van. Every­one packed pretty light except for Jamie who pulled a Princess Vespa. Then we drove out to The Rive­ria to pick up the last mem­ber of our team. Not after hav­ing a final round of shots for the road. Of course I would start a 20+ hour drive with no sleep.

DAY 01 -
The drive there / Raided by Bor­der Patrol

DAY 02 -
Arriv­ing in Austin / Tape Deck Mtn / Con­stel­la­tion Branch

DAY 03 -
Knife Prince / GZA / Bill Mur­ray / Emo’s

DAY 04 -
Holy Fuck / Matt Pond PA / Phan­togram / GWAR

DAY 05 -
Free Energy / Demol­ished Thought / Bro­ken Bells / She & Him

DAY06 -
The long road home

All in all I think I only spent $250 for the whole trip. We had no passes, wrist­bands, or press cre­den­tials. Though most of us worked for the media. Our antics were men­tioned on air on 91x. We will be back next year for SXSW 2011.

Minus The Bear vs Matt & Kim

Down­load:

IntoThe­Day­light

Get Matt & Kim’s: “Day­light“
Get Minus the Bears: “Into the Mir­ror”

Cap­tain EO bitches!

-

After see­ing Cap­tain EO for the first time and then find­ing enlight­en­ment on Space Moun­tain. Kamele now goes by Cap­tain Kamele and has made a new mix tape full of beats and nos­tal­gia. For some rea­son the Cap­tain did not include and of Michael Jack­son’s hits on it. Per­haps he is up to more nefar­i­ous deeds.

The Mix is over this way ->