Happy New Year

...sending out a prayer to the universe for all of us to have a blessed and prosperous 2006.

Shopping Carts and Babies Butts

I love babies! I probably love babies more than most guys that don't have their own kids. The other day I'm walking through the produce section of my local Korean supermarket. I put a bag of oranges in the shopping cart. I laid them down in the front part of the cart where people let their babies sit. After placing a few more items it hit me! My god! This is where the asses and diapers of hundreds of babies have sat! I've just laid my food down where an uncountable number of babies have farted, urinated, oozed their glow-in-the-dark green diarrhea, drooled and picked their noses then rubbed fingers on the cart's handle!

I washed my hands when I got home. The oranges were yummy!

text message from gig - sleeping soundman

Text message #1 to friend in Vegas:
@ bb king's club L.A. waiting 2 go on. current band is torturing me. please kill me. ~armen

Text message #2:
worried about our sound 2nite. soundman looks so cute sleeping next to me, hate to wake him.

Gig Report

Gashouse Dave @ Jax: A kick-ass gig! The place was packed and the band was rockin' hard! You know people are having a great time when women start dancin' and grindin' with other women and then exchange phone numbers immediately afterwards. At one point, Dave cued us to end the song but Ron the bassist had a big smile on his face and shook his head as if to say, "No way are we endin' this thing with that kind of eye candy happenin'!" Yes, men are pigs, but we like to have a good time too! The Gasman had to try two or three times to get us to stop the song! We finally did. Sorry Dave, but it might happen again.
~Lesson learned on this gig: Always have your camera with you!

Armen Chakmakian @ Holiday Beats On Brand Blvd. event: I felt I played my ass off and did very well. This was the first time and will mostly likely be the last time I will ever play to playback tracks for one of my own gigs. No, I didn't have an Ashlee Simpson episode like her SNL disaster. I just find it extremely unstimulating to play music without other musicians in the group. It was a karaoke version of Armen Chakmakian. Budget aside, I was thinking of putting together a trio for this event, but after finding out more details about this gig, I didn't want to subject my musicians to what I felt might be a potentially humiliating experience because I respect them too much. I felt this event was poorly advertised by the City of Glendale, the location was horrible and no one would show up (I love Milano's Restaurant, but there's zero foot traffic there on Sunday and there was mass construction on the street and a crappy parking situation that day).

So why didn't I just play solo piano? Because at most outdoor venues, the talking and noise tends to compete with the music and you can quickly turn into background music. Regarding my hunch that it was advertised poorly, I was right. I saw a poster which listed none of the artists who were performing except for the Christmas Tuba Ensemble. If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times, it's Armen Chakmakian AND THEN Christmas Tuba Ensemble!

However, I was wrong about thinking that no one showing up and I have a photo to prove it. This is a photo of 75% of the people that showed up:

Left to Right: friend, wife, friend, and friend.

Lastly, there was nothing "Holiday" about this gig. There were seven to eight bands doing this at different locations on the same street, and they had about the same turn out that we did at our location...such a waste of money for the tax payers of Glendale.

~Lesson learned on this gig: 1) Don't expect things to go well when the goverment hires you to perform; 2) Always ask the promoter exactly how they are planning on advertising the event; 3) if it's a multi-artist event, find out if they're going to MENTION YOUR NAME IN THE FRIGIN' ADS, POSTERS/etc!! 4) Be okay with pulling out of the event even if it's at the last minute.

Totally Cool Gadget

This is one of the coolest ideas I've seen from swissbit. Put this one in the "why didn't I think of that?" catagory.

"Advanced" Society & Naked Tribes on Television

I found something to be so odd yesterday. I'm watching a documentary on the Zoe, a tribe from North Brazil near the Amazon River. They hunt for monkeys, have a poturu (a wooden plug) pierced through their bottom lip to distinguish them from other tribes (that's hardcore!) and are pretty much unclothed all the time.

As advanced as we think our society is, it was so interesting that someone at the television station found it necessary to blur out all the adult penises and vaginas. Female breasts and children's genitalia were perfectly okay to show. I took a look around me to notice electric lights, my comfortable couch; I have indoor plumbing, a refrigerator, and bathroom. This is pretty luxurious compared to a dirt floor, monkeys for dinner and huts. Damn we're advanced, aren't we!

I couldn't help but notice that exposed penises and vaginas don't seem to bother them. Who is bothered by this in our "progressive" civilization? I was watching eight-year old girls caring for babies, older men and women farming together, hunting, etc. It was a non-sexually charged atmosphere. Penises and vaginas don't bother or distract their men during their chores...the women don't care, the children don't seem to notice, and it doesn't even phase the monkeys! Why blur them out? All that does is draw more attention to it. Secondly, why are the children's wieners and coochy-pops okay to show?

2 shows: Armen Chakmakian; Gashouse Dave

Friday Dec. 9 9pm-1am- We'll be tearing it up at Jax Bar & Grill again with blues singer and guitarist Gashouse Dave and the Hard Tails.

Jax Bar & Grill, 339 N.Brand Blvd.,
Glendale, CA 91203, (818) 500-1604

___________________________

Sunday Dec. 11 somewhere between 2pm-5pm (exact time TBA) I'll be doing some solo piano or piano/percussion for the HOLIDAY BEATS ON BRAND event in Glendale on Brand Blvd. in front of Milano's Restaurant.

Milano's, 525 North Brand Blvd.,
Glendale, CA 91203 Tel. (818) 244-1150