Joshua Van Tassel

Last night thousands of women across North America put on their nicest shoes, grabbed their most expensive hand bags and headed for the nearest movie house for the premiere of “Sex in The City”.
I read a couple reviews of the movie on Thursday in Eye and NOW magazine, who both pretty much called it an over blown piece of fluff garbage.
The funny thing about it is that it reallllly doesn’t mater what any reviews say about it, people are still going to go, and they’re going to love it. Countless arguments (and chances are relationships) have been started and ended over the validity of the show, does it objectify or empower women (both), does it make men look like sex obsessed pieces of meat ( well, guys, we did that to ourselves), etc.

The point is that this movie is going to make millions of dollars regardless of what reviewers, cranky boyfriends, or “intellectual film” lovers say. Girls are going to get together, go out for drinks, and have a really good time, and the fact that a movie can pull that together is great.

Now here’s some music I made while I was one of the boyfriends left home while the SITC party went down……

so it’s time to put something out. I started a little project in January, have been talking about it a whole lot since then, and here it is for better or for worse.

On Friday June 6th check the store, and my first record called “one window” will be available for the wonderfully recognizable price of $9.99. It’ll only be available in download form right here for the world to ….well, download and do with it is as you see fit. Here’s a sample of the first tune called ” travel/no travel” featuring the lovely Sarah Kurtis on vocals….hope to see you Friday morning……..

I’ve been thinking recently a lot about memory, and how for years not only scientists and psychologists, but artists as well have been obsessively trying to understand it and how it works. It’s a huge subject, and I claim to have no answers to any of the questions. I was just realizing last night going through some recordings that our generation really has the most accurate and publicized memory in our world’s history. Every night and day of your life has the potential to be captured in photo/video/audio form and broad casted to the internet world almost in real time.

Our memories are now preserved for us, not just by ourselves but by others around us. Does this make us lazy with our own mental computers aka minds? How many of actually sit around and just remember? Probably not a lot. It can be a frustrating and sometimes really painful experience; there’s a lot of things that we try hard to forget, but there’s so much there worth remembering for ourselves.

Wow, that was slightly preachy. Anyway, here’s a little audio memory I came across from my Bathurst days with my compadre Devon. This was the first thing I recorded when I got my first power book, it makes me all teary eared and nostalgic.

*on a footnote I’m reading an amazing book by a new British author called “the Raw Shark Texts” and I totally dig it. (Really intense website too…..) All abut memory loss and mystery, check it out.

and this is how I’m feeling

However, my lady friend was very kind to me yesterday and bought me a wonderful book that has pictures like this in it -

Oh man. Squirrels doing people things. It doesn’t get much funnier.

update -

*and now the sun just came out. No more excuses for brooding music.

for somebody, just not sure who yet.

The first single from my little album is now up and ready to go in the “buy things here” area, or by clicking riiiiight here. It’s a little tune  I wrote about a great beach back home in NS that had a large chunk of it torn up after a nasty hurricane.

Have a listen, let me know what you think, and I’ll keep you posted as to the date for the actual “cd” coming out…..

you’d look like this -

and this is how today sounds to you, from flower level on the ground -

In honor of the 75th birthday of scotch tape, here’s a onepiecepiece made from a roll of the good stuff that we all know and love. Apparently to save money back in the day, 3M used to only put adhesive on the outside edges of the tape, leaving the middle completely bare. We’re lucky people folks.

I spent a great long weekend in Prince Edward county, where I ate some great food, tried on a really expensive pair of old spanish leather shoes, heard raccoons screaming and being shot at, and met some nice people. Here’s one of my favorite sounds from the weekend ( with the exception of raccoon/gunfire, which I didn’t record because I was too busy being completely terrified.)

I’ll be out of town for the next few days and avoiding computers and cell phones like they were diseased infested monkeys, and I’m an explorer deep in the jungle with no hope of antidote if I get bit.

Here’s a piece of a tune from this album I keep talking about though – - I swear it’s almost done….in fact check back here next Friday May 23rd for the release of the first single from it on a shiny new webstore that will be going up very soon……until then have a great long weekend…..