+ I'm having yet another identity crisis involving my name and so called artist name. Are artists name necessary? Does Zirafa work? What about Robot Dinosaur? Or just Midnight Parking? Midnight Parker? If you have an opinion about this please comment below.

+ Kevin, Jason and I finished up mixing last week amid the week-before-spring-break haze. Now all that is left is tweaking the mix and EQing levels. This last stage is always the hardest because it is hard to get it just right.

+Still organizing the dinner and a rock show event scheduled tentatively for april 15; still awaiting confirmation from
channing murray foundation. I'll keep you up to speed on that.



+BTE playing GSR benefit show. Sunday, April 24.

+Today is Nowrooz, the Iranian new year. Thankfully I happen to be home today and was able to eat all the delicious food and lay on the couch for hours watching sunday movies. Haven't done that in a while.


Tomorrow I head out to charlottsville. If you are reading this and are in charlottesville, you can find me at kaveh's, where I'll be crashing for a few days.

p.s. Orange Drink is a liar. I answered his weekly quiz question correctly, yet was denied the glory of the win.

Another busy weekend:


+Funny Face

Last summer I dressed up in a blue bathroom mat and played the part of a school mascot in an Olde English sketch. After losing some footage, they've reworked it and posted it online. Click here to check it out!

+New picsound! "Layed off, Down and Out", picture submitted by roomate Onur. I'm pretty sure that's him in the bunny costume. Another one will be up by the end of the week.

+Black Tie Elephant

On Saturday we met up to record a 4 song demo in our basement, however, we ended up laying down 11 tracks! It went from 4 song demo to EP to LP to "greatest hits" to "Best of Black Tie Elephant" within hours...

Collin brought close to $5000 worth of mics borrowed from ISU, along with a dual G5 and a mixer. We nailed moldy carpet to the walls to dampen the acoustics of the room, except it smelled like old feet so we used an entire bottle of febreeze, a scented candle, burnt matches, glade plugins, and lysol to battle the odor. The feet smell and the good smells waged a war all weekend, although the good smell is slowly but surely gaining ground. Pictures of it all will come soon! (I'm sure this excites you)

It was a long day. We woke up, recorded from 2pm to 9pm, ate, and then pooped out for the night. On Sunday Collin and Brendan laid down cello and bass tracks over the drums that I had laid down the day before, from about 5pm to 10 pm at night.



+Jason and Kevin

From 1pm-5pm on Sunday Kevin, Jason and I mixed a good 9 or so tracks of their new album. I think we'll be able to finish up the last two by the end of the week, hopefully.



+Dinner and a Rock Show
So I'm trying to put together a show type thing at the Red Herring sometime in mid-april, probably around the 15th. It'll be a friday, I'm pretty sure - but the premise is to have a vegetarian sponsored pasta night at the same time as a rock show. The bands that I hope to get to play:


Black Tie Elephant (noisy jazz-punk)

Orange Drink (experimental folk rock)

My Masterpiece will be a Burning Museum (hardcore madlibs and dodgeball)

Tofu Boots (noisy folk extravaganza)

Jason and Kevin (pantless old school folk)



Also there will be some old school videogames to play on a projector in a corner of the room, and possibly a four square ball will be there. Basically nobody should have an excuse to be bored or hungry.


Spring break next week, coming to UVA!

So this week was one of the busiest/hectic ones I've had in a long time. Let's take a gander at the past few days:

-Black Tie Elephant show. We had to learn 15 songs in 3 weeks, which was quite a feat. Practiced a ton and put on a 2 hour show at Paradiso! A success, thanks to the dedicated friends that came out to support us. I still haven't listened to the recording - if any of it is usable, it will show up on the black tie elephant page. We will probably be going to try to record something officially in the next week or two. When it warms up, I think we're gonna try playing outside!

-GSR track. Worked tirelessly to finish up the submission for the Green Street Records compilation. Spinnerty and I were swapping files over AIM at 3 AM the night before it was due. "Is this beat cutup any good?" "I'm going to put popcorn popping over this beat", etc. I am really pleased how it turned out, and will be posting it on the web soon so people can hear it. GSR will also be giving away 2500 copies of the CD to university of illinois students for free. Peepity peep that hotness.

-Recorded Jason and Kevin's New Album. On saturday, Jason and Kevin came over with a bass and acoustic guitar. From 2 pm to 12:30 am (10 1/2 hours!) we recorded 10 tracks. With only a short pizza break around 8 pm, it was a looonnggg day. But we got an amazing amount of material onto tape, and will be mixing it all soon. This will be Kevin's 12th album (!) If they agree to it, I'll post some audio clips online and maybe some links to purchase it when they release it.

-Web host change. Apologies to those that tried to visit midnightparking.com and the site was down. I decided to switch webhosts and there was some miscommunication during the transfer process and so the site was down for a day or two. Everything *should* be running smoothly now but please let me know through email if you get an error message.

Somewhere in there I had to fit in school, too. So I apologize for no picsound last week, I owe you 2 this week, so hold me to it!



The next thing I'll be working on is the audiozine and possibly a 45 wax single with Spinnerty.




Oh, and if you get the chance, check out the stones throw 101 DVD that was released a while ago. It has some of the most interesting music videos I've seen in a while. It includes a mix CD by peanut butter wolf as well.

What's goin on everybody. Worked on the Green St. Records track this weekend, bouncin' it off spinnerty once again and we'll see what happens with it...



Picsound will be up soon, hopefully, by mid-week. Been rehearsing for the show on Friday (power to the big font):

Please come to the show, and bring your friends! I promise it will rock your knickers off. We got some realllly sweet tunes and even some surprises in store.

I'm pretty sure i posted a new post here two days ago but it disappeared for some reason. I'm runnin' a little late on the picsound for this week, I apologize. This week is hella busy!! But check out what's happenin in the mutant music section. Aaron is literally smokin' everyone with hot loops. Drew has finally submitted something as well.

The track Spin and I are doin for the GSR compilation is due extremely soon, I'll keep you all posted about it (there have been some interesting developments), meanwhile Black Tie Elephant is continuing preparation for the March 4th show (friday after next). I've been recording many many musical ideas on my mini cassette recorder, I'm thinking about posting random audio bits on this site.

Thanks again to the many pictures posted to be picsounded. I'm gonna try and knock them out one by one, and I'm also down for posting a music loop and having everyone submit drawings or pictures to match it (idea by asif).

Ok, well this week I was doing a ton of work to the UC Hiphop website; I couldn't stand the template I was using before and everything was confusing looking. I'd say its the first site where I can actually say I'm almost done with it. Unlike this one... :)

So this week we've got a new picsound, a short film by Jamie and Brendan Finucane. I don't take any credit for it, they definitely filmed and scored the whole thing. Be on the look out for these two at the next Sundance festival!
Click here to go to the picsounds page.
Thanks to those of you who submitted picsound pics; I'll try and get to them sometime soon. BTE is preparing for their show on March 4th, I'm in negotiations with Kevin and Jason about recording their next EP...things are way busy. It's valentine's day, so try and have a good one, even if you don't quite understand the day (like me). Make sure to score a lot of candy - but not those weird nasty heart shaped sweet tart things that taste like bitter dust.

From: David Segal
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 11:58:00 -0500
Subject: Midnight Parking: The CULT

"So I'm at Panera Bread and they have free wireless access, and I'm
like sweet, so I'm mozying around the internet, and I say hey, what's
up at good old MidnightParking. Go to the site and get a message
saying that (this is in the attatched file in an .rtf that contains
the source code (wouldn't let me save as a webpage) the site was
blocked because it fell under the Cult/Occult category with their
filtering system (SonicWALL). So I mozied on over to SonicWALL and
found this page
(http://www.sonicwall.com/products/cfs_categories.html) where they
explain what that means. They say: "Sites sponsored by prominent
organized modern religious groups that are identified as "cults" by
three or more authoritative sources. Sites that promote or offer
methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or
influence real events through the use of spells, curses, magic powers
or supernatural beings." and as examples they have "www.satannet.com"
and "www.churchofsatan.com". So my question to you is, what deal did
you make with Satan that got you a sweet ass webpage and some
ill-shaped chandalier music skillz?"

Aside from the above disturbing news I received about this website, there is also this...!

Wow, seems like a LOT happened since last week. See if you can keep up:

+ Check out the new picsound, "Drunk Drummer" in the picsounds section! Don't forget you can upload a picture and I'll try and make a picsound out of it. Thanks for the friends that already submitted stuff. Keep it up!

+ So our local arts and entertainment paper here at school ran a few things of interest in last week's issue. First off, check out how they refer to a so-called "DJ Farsheed Hamidi-Toosi"... who is this imposter?! Please contact me with any information regarding this matter.

+ In other news, betterPropoganda.com has listed my track, "Dark as the Night" in their top 20 most downloaded listing and it's in the top 5 most downloaded electronic tracks. How? Who knows!

+ I posted live tracks of Black Tie Elephant here. You can also see some pics of us on that page.

+Some of you may remember that flash audio player I made a while back. Well, I greatly improved it so it actually looks somewhat professional. You can now stream spinnery's playlist here (updated often!). There will soon be a version for my tracks, as well as redBus and Black Tie Elephant.

+Getting back to the local Buzz article. There was a letter to the editor that happened to catch my eye. I felt so strongly about this issue that I decided to write a letter to the editor about the letter to the editor. You can read it below:

Link to Carli Bailey's letter to the editor

My response...

I'm writing in response to Carli Bailey's letter to the editor
in the Jan 27 edition of the Buzz.  Apparently Carli feels
that art students complaining about "fumes, rodents  
and general overall conditions of the studio work spaces
available to them" is not justified because great art comes
from the worst conditions, and that aspiring artists  
should get used to it. 

You can now upload pictures to my website by clicking

I'll look at 'em and try and put music/picsound them. Thanks to everyone who came to the black tie elephant show!! I had a great time playing, even if it was a bit short. No doubt we will be playing again very soon. You can read more about us and listen to some songs from the show by clicking

School has started again, 2nd to last semester. Part of me wishes this was my last semester, the other part is scared shitless to think about that.

SPAM EMAIL OF THE WEEK:

Hello,

With the best compliments of the year,pardon me,I wish to 
plead with you to be my Investor/Trustee and solicit your 
help in settling for business investment in your country 
with good funds.Am really sorry for invading your 
privacy,do bear with me as this would be beneficial to us 

Mr. Kevin Davis has submitted a gushing review of Turnstyles. Is it bias? Yes. Will I still post it? Yes. :)

The new band I'm in, "Black Tie Elephant", is playing at the Canopy this Thursday at 10pm for the IMC radio benefit. There will be a bunch of fun acts and it should be a good time. Since making fonts bigger seem to attract more attention: