News
 | August 30, 2005 |
Mobile, Biloxi, New Orleans...as bad or worse than feared in many places... Such a tragedy unfolding in a kind of cruel slow motion. Here's hoping the morning sees Paratroopers and Navy Seals on the ground. Meanwhile, donations : http://instapundit.com/archives/025235.php. Prayers: http://www.rateitall.com/s-ll-953-new-orleans-religion.aspx
I'm not one for big political statements, and this is certainly no where to get your news, but God bless any of you in the affected areas.
| August 29, 2005 |
The rare truth: "Just an e-mail to tell you how much I like your music and how good it is to meet girls... Your records are the best way to flirt. Keep up your good job ! ;-)" ...i'm just so proud.
| August 29, 2005 |
So these are the two posters for the French tour in October. The first one i call "Flower Boy" the second one is "Glasses with Wig" ...... you may need to blow it up to get the joke. Votes?
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| August 27, 2005 |
??Ç?Ò???º?Ð?.~??.~?.~?.????, Ó??â???Ö???å -dajiyuan.com- ·?í?Ï? ............I admire Chinese spam...............oops, all the cool characters turned into question marks..........."I'm pretty sure you're too busy, but if I ever really got married, do you think I could book you for my wedding? (and Jack Johnson) I think I would be more happy about that than getting married." ........I'll talk to Jack and see what we can do, but I wouldn't count on it...unless you want to get fake married, as opposed to 'really' doing it, and then I'm your man. Just come out to a show, and I'll gladly incorporate the ceremony into the live performance. It won't be the first time. Now, it might not be legally binding, but I expect anyone I marry to give it a real shot! One couple in Texas went ahead and augmented our nuptuals with some more of their own. I guess with a priest and stuff, whatever. The point is, if you want to get married, and you want me involved, we'll do that on my terms - and they don't include my being asked to play "Celebrate" ... Tomorrow, for a laugh, we'll all look at the French tour posters together. So very exciting...
| August 27, 2005 |
"Life Lays Me Down" is a demo that never saw the light of day. It was recorded by Carl Stephenson, of Beck's "Loser" fame. He basically invented trip-hop. I met him later, when he was wanting to purely folk out, and we had to really ply him to even get a beat on it. This is probably '95/96. What's cool is that we finally made a great record on Love, Love, Love, which I'll put on my next album. .............. The second track, "Taking More and Giving Less", is me with the inimitable Andy Prieboy, 'Live at Big Mike's'. This was literally the first time we'd played the song together, thus the mistakes. It's the only time I've ever played with a hype-man, and I have to say it's going to be tough to top this recording...although there's another verse which finishes the story...
| August 24, 2005 |
To. Mor. Row. We will put up some new music if i have to figure out how to do it myself. Still not 100% sure if it's a friday or a saturday show in San Diego, but it's the middle of September. ... if anyone wants to loan a piano or wurlitzer for the Portlans show, please drop a line. ... Paul Kimble will be playing in Seattle at the Tractor - sharing a bill once again!
| August 21, 2005 |
Happy Sunday - eat what you want! "Thank you both for giving me the feeling I belong on this planet even though I am definetly from Outer Space." . . . That's why we're here. And yes, i met Wiliam Roe before i knew about William, the blue hippo from the Met's collection. Later today - King Tut. Kind of 'Cribs' on golden steroids. Or something like that - I'll let you know...
Update! King Tut report: Buy the DVD. Some of the stuff was remarkable, but with so many people milling around and Omar Sharif whispering in your ear like a sensitive man who became momentarily excited on his deathbed, I was glad to make it to the gift shop. The permanent exhibit at the Met in New York is probably better, but some of the objects and heiroglyphs had real artistic signature, which I often miss in ancient work. Maybe it was the haste with which the tomb was prepared ... Oh well. They're all dead. .... Which got me thinking...what if the young King, who seems to have been steamrolled by older 'advisors' into re-establishing polytheism and it's myriad superstitions, was basically superstitious himself, and what if his number one fear in the world was having his grave messed with - or oh, let's say, having his corpse un-earthed, unwrapped, and paraded around the known world? I mean, he was the King, for Aton's sake! At this rate, we're all going to wind up in some creepy "art" exhibit kicking a soccer ball without our skin. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.kingtut.org/gallery.htm .....more music tomorrow.
| August 18, 2005 |
"Hi Jude, my canadian girlfriend just wants to say that the blue on your website is very ugly...and the letters are too small too........you know...girls....they always have to complain of something...but she loves your music since your first release and thinks that your very handsome..."
Ah ..... girls. Or, as everyone knows I like to call them, Chickitas. Ladies. Senoritas. Le Femme Frauleins. The-ones-who-drive-us-all-crazy-and-without-whom- everything-is-meaningless. First of all, blue is very well established as ONE OF THE FAVORITE COLORS IN THE WORLD!: ...and maybe your Canadian Girlfriend should have her eyes examined - on two counts as I read it. Or maybe what she's TRYING to say is that you should buy her a bigger screen. Or you could at least tell her the secret about increasing the font size in a browser window...and I love you both.
| August 18, 2005 |
"Tired of languishing in the midwest awaiting your return, I'll ask instead whether your trip to France might require the services of an experienced librarian (on qui peut parler français aussi)..." ....Oh, absolutely. First, you could come to Los Angeles and help me organize my thousands of books. I like to keep moving them around into different formations until I've forgotten which ones I haven't read. Then we could sit and smoke cigars together with an old scotch and I can pretend to know more than I do. . . .Oh, wait, I don't need help with any of that. Hmmm. . Well, on tour you could gather and organize the newspapers and magazines I'll buy on the road. Not a lot of work, really, and very little glamour, but I'll see what the label thinks as far as paying your room and board. Oh, and let's say you happen to catch me with an old library book which was never returned - are you compelled to turn me in?
| August 17, 2005 |
Spent the afternoon bickering and singing with the supergroup up in the Hollywood hills. How was your day? We're hoping to record music with the esteemed George Drakulius (he worked on my first record) next week . . . but it may take longer to start. We have a pile of songs and we're getting them all worked up so we can choose. It's a good problem to have. . . . . If we can't start before I leave for France I'll get into my new record, but that's not likely now before November...
Here's one for you, friends - my marvelous record company, Naive, has offered me two posters to choose between for our tour in October. One has me smelling a flower and looking to the side, while the other has me in sunglasses...and my hair looks like a bad wig. ...wait, I'll put them both up and we can choose tomorrow.
| August 15, 2005 |
V-J Day. they still celebrate it in Rhode Island.
http://www.life.com/Life/special/kiss03.html
| August 14, 2005 |
Happy Sunday! This morning I'm listening to Beethoven...I keep noticing a little string signature that I heard in a Gershwin prelude the other night at the hollywood Bowl, something very Porgy. It's nice to know that even the geniuses lift. I have the Bee playing on two different stereos throughout the house, which I think he would appreciate....So I'm eating my cereal with berries and just feeling very sunday morning, and then I (foolishly) opened up website mail to find hellos and spam and . . . "Sorry but i never kissed a man on your songs or i didn't lose my virginity on "I Do" like a lot of girls it seems. For me you're just moments of pleasure where my mind and my ears are concentrated on your beautiful artwork! You're like a voice i have always known but always surprising though.... "
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. You can't just drop that kind of broad suggestion and then cover it up with kisses and compliments. Yeah, yeah, nice voice - thank you...but WHAT is it with this desire to personally communicate to me the image of people having awkward first sex to one of my songs. ... Beethoven never would have ..... what am I saying..... he lived before recorded music, so unless people were having crazy sex while he played (maybe in the kitchen, while the aristocrats sat and listened?).....oh, this is ridiculous. I've got to drive to a gas station and look for my wallet. Now that's something he wouldn't have had to deal with. Maybe I've got to get a little more imperious.
| August 14, 2005 |
I mean, wow, you people are going a little bit crazy with the CDBaby sales. Take it easy already. If the world's coolest intern, Mark, makes it back from his weekend holiday in one piece ok, then we'll go ahead and put together the live thing we've been talking about. It'll be Baton Rouge plus a couple Largo tracks and a bonus song or two. Probably minimalist artwork. Very little chance of homespun pornography. Almost definitely going to be confusing liner notes. ........looks like Cuba is going to make the compilation, since it belonged on "King Of Yesterday" in the first place.... Yes Dublin, ....oh, I've said this so many times... "Why don't you come to Turkey?" ..... um, because it's far and expensive....."of course I love all your albums... it seems logic" ...exactly. ...
Portland woes: "I've been to all of your Portland concerts since the Christmas concert with the Barenaked Ladies, Jewel, Dido, and you… remember? It was the first concert I ever went to. One of my first dates with my now-boyfriend of three years was one of your Aladdin Theater shows. Thank you for playing then, I completely fell for him there. Anyway, I'm seriously contemplating not telling my friends who will be staying in Portland, who are also fans of yours, that you'll be here. I think I'd be too jealous of them. So I was wondering if you would ever play in Missoula. You'll have at least one huge fan there." ....... bit of a conflict of interest going on there, no? I mean, is it all about you? or is it all about me? Shouldn't it really be "us"? What if i told you that what we share can never be touched by your friends, that it's so special between us that you never need be jealous for a moment, because everything between me and all those other people is only an after-ran to what we - and, well, your boyfriend - shared. Would you believe that and stop keaping secrets from your friends?
'Cause I gotta sell some tickets up there.
| August 12, 2005 |
Spent yesterday with the group, working up new songs in the hopes that we can get in the studio before I go to France in October. We'll see. It sounds great when it's all together. Too much practice for my taste. Later today the cameras come back and we start again for a day and a half. Mostly I've been walking around trying to decide between an opening verse or a chorus beginning a new song. .....And reading drafts of a contract......Oh, and flaking terribly on getting T-shirts together............... My tomatoes have come in fine, but I've found that the handsome looking"Roma" tomatoes have very little taste, more for sauce, really - which means I just feed them to Moses, my large tortoise. The little cherry ones are great,but I only planted one, so every couple days I pick and eat a few, like some kind of small benefit from the earth that I gobble up quickly to make the relationship real. And my "Heirlooms" ... well, you know how when you get a new car you start noticing other people driving it everywhere? Now every shop or store I go into, plus every corner or market, has enormous, handsome tomatoes for sale for next to nothing in just the right varieties. And I'm guessing they all taste perfect. But I may never know, as I won't buy them out of principle. And that's this week's "Tomato Update"
| August 10, 2005 |
Show added in San Diego, friday, September 16th - details soon.
| August 8, 2005 |
Hello to "Frisco" (are you visiting?) ... hello to India ... Hello UK ...... Guten Tag, Deutschland!...... Hello again, Dublin, and as always, HEY TEXAS! (You've got to feed their 'big' complex). Thank you all for your letters and stories. I'll print some more silly ones soon. ... This evening we went to see a pitch production for a musical called Rock of Ages. It features hit songs from the 80's and was written by my dear friend, Chris Darienzo, who was awesome as the Sunset Strip Sound-Guy and is now considered a quintuple threat. I met the fellow who played the earnest and talented singer-songwriter, a really nice actor with a heartbreaking voice, and he joked(?) that they modeled the role after me. It was very sweet. I'm sure you'll all be hearing about the show soon enough, but until you do, imagine forty dancers singing "Don't Stop Believing" to a crowd holding lighters and screaming along. Just another day here in fantasy-land. .......
| August 6, 2005 |
"My sister and I have been recruiting fans for you for a number of years now up in NH and chewing out people who download your music instead of buying it. I think we deserve a show." ....... Of course you do. I'm trying. DC friends as well, I'll come somewhere back east this fall. Maybe Boston.
Want to hear about going after what you want? "My wife and I cannot wait any longer, we are booking a flight to Portland today so we can watch you and the Gentleman perform. We live in Minneapolis and can no longer wait for you to come to the midwest again. We saw your last tour here a few years back - at Cafe Montmarte in Madison, WI and Gabes in Iowa City. Now we will make our way west to fill our Jude fix. Here is hoping for a long, great show in Portland on the 9th!!" ....Minneapolis makes it happen! (that might be better than their current slogan, but I'm not sure) ......... and finally: "I fear that I will not be the author of one of the messages you quote..."
Fear not, my friends. Have fun out there.
| August 5, 2005 |
"hey jude, have you been to paris before? it's entirely amazing... obviously - k."
Ah, little k. We'll soon fix this page to allow everyone to scroll down and read posts from the not-so-distant past, like the ones I wrote from Paris. Like the one about .........oh, I'm being mean for no reason. Welcome to my world, k. It's a little blue, it's not so new, and most of what you read is true. .......Spent the day sending bits of music to New York for a tv show. Sell. Out. Me slow on computers. Mp3 hard for me. .........Visited the legendary Bomb Factory for the second time in a week. ....... My friend in France was attacked by four guys and and, literally, hammered in the face. So please send him your thoughts. And try to keep any puns/jokes to yourself. I hope all of you are better than good. More soon.
| August 2, 2005 |
Paddle boats = noisy interview. It's hard to remain cool and to seem as though you belong when people are yelling at you that you're crossing their fishing lines. Documentary crew is gone for a couple weeks - now back to songs. i realized in an interview today that I have several hundred in various forms which have never seen the light of day. I've got to do something about that. ....... I'm afraid my grammer is taking on a French lilt. ............and yes, Dublin, I'm trying to get to you, too!
| August 2, 2005 |
The special, highly filmed show was fun, but exhausting. I came off stage and was told we played for two hours, so no wonder...I really do play too long. Thanks to everyone who spoke to the filmakers, and to all of you for coming out on a monday night. ...I think the San Diego show is a go ...went to Paramount after the show and hung out with my new friends in the Wu-Tang Clan...seriously. Actually more like aquaintances, but as you can imagine, we really feed off each other's work. Well.... in fact it was an excuse to check out the studio, visit with super-producer George Drakulius, play a beautiful piano, and to sing a bit with the wonderful Chris Seefried, who sat-in tonight on "Married". And to meet Rizza and The Prodigal Son. Seriously. .
Tomorrow we do the final interview for this documentary on paddle boats at the lake by my house. Wish you all could be there. Coming very soon... the lost King Of Yesterday video....
| August 1, 2005 |
Dudes and Dudettes, thanks for making last month the biggest ever here at Judemusic - woohoo! I'll try to keep updating while things get crazy. We have so many more video gems hiding around here. This week, when the compilation is finally set, we'll post the ones that didn't make it, alt-mixes I've been holding onto for years. I'm doing another sit-down with the Euro film crew today, and then they're going to follow me around for the rest of the day - like, to the chiropractor, I guess. And then, you know, to pick up my race car from the Argentinian specialist. And then we'll blow into the factory to lay down some sweet tracks if the feeling's right. ..... a little love? . .. . allright: "Last time you came to Seattle I had to be away on family matters, but this time I have tickets and am hella excited. If need be I will disown the family." C'mon, man, BRING the family. Nothing is cooler than letting go by letting your mom dig the same music you do. Wait, I'm just reading that back and I'm not sure I believe it at all. That's a some people kind of thing. If coming out to my show in your goth wear or your tranny outfit is something that would lose all it's self-affirming power by standing there under lights next to your parents, then by all means, give them the slip and lets rock alone together in Seattle. ........and I'll see some of you tonight.
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