Nice Traits

I just created a myspace page with a few recordings that I..ve made over here in the Orient. The page -- under the name Nice Traits -- might someday accurately be seen as representing me as some sort of solo musician, but couldn..t be seen thusly for the time being, as I don..t feel nearly that confident.¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥That said, the first two tracks on the page are me playing guitar by myself. They were recorded one after another, in the shower stall of my apartment, a few days ago. On both tracks, the guitar (a ¥10,000 beater, which I blame for any imperfections in my playing) is tuned AAAEAE, but on the first there..s some crap stuck in the strings, at the head and the bridge.¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥The third track is from band ....practice.... with Ezra and Dave, my British bandmates. Most of the stuff we..ve been doing has been more consonant and droney than this, but, not surprisingly, the best session recordings of that sort of thing have run twenty, thirty, forty minutes. Until that shit gets edited down, this -- a funny sort of hip hop jam (on which I..m operating a couple looping pedals, as well as playing a bit of contact-mic-ed thumb-piano into those looping pedals) -- will do.¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥The fourth track is from a show I went to a few weeks ago in a tiny bar in Koenji (western Tokyo). The first half is the last bit of a guy doing what I gathered to be a sort-of performance piece where he ranted about something or other, some into a mic and some not, while abusing an acoustic guitar. About a minute or so in to the recording the people running the show decide to stop him, and it gets really hot. Listen to the two MCs.. singsong banter (reassuring the audience?) while the guy croaks wildly in the background. You hear a girl at the front of the audience say ....diajobuh!.... (....it..s okay!....) to the bartender, as he was coming at the ranter/croaker with a guitar stand because dude had started drop-kicking his acoustic guitar around the little room. I tell you: this is a priceless cultural/musicological document·