Somewhere in town a sensation lays dormant, waiting for some catalyst to spark the life back into it. This place seems on the edge of erruption or complete annihilation, and of the two I can't tell which is the more likely outcome.

Sometimes when Prosolar Mechanics set out to break open the local landscape, I imagine we are landing in a home port after a long and tiring mission. I try to imagine a homecoming of sorts. The faces will be familiar and appreciative. The mission is a celebration, and our job is to do what we can to ensure the crowd participates to their fullest. Drinking, dancing, swaying back and forth and inciting as much mayhem as possible. Loud and yet barely audible conversations about the state of indie music and the scene.

What will happen if in ten years we look back on ourselves and see that in 1998, while we were pining away for past and more exciting times (the 70's? Are you kidding? Even the 80's are a decade away now...), we somehow missed the good time we were having right now?

So I was having a good time. I was drinking and dancing all night. I would flit about the club, sharing winks, nods, hugs and kisses with my co-conspirators and potential audience all night. This was Jersey Beat night, after all, and when Jersey Beat graces the hub city, it is a sign of recognition we would all do well to acknowledge and appreciate.

Today's My Super Spaceout Day drove all the way from Chicago as a part of their most recent tour. They started us off with a beautiful noise and got me thinking more about what sound could and should do to us. Sound when you are purposeful about using it. They were really good, and I was in the mood. I stayed in the mood all night.

Next, our favorite pornstars, the Stuntcocks, wrecked the bar. Now at this point, I must state that the Stuntcocks busted the Prosolar Cherry back in July of 1997 when they asked us to open for them at the Plum Street Pub on a Wednesday night. It was our initial descent into the hell that is live music. Albie of the cocks, and Dave and I all used to play in another band together, so we are really talking family here. The incest of music.

The Stuntcocks have been going through a lot these days, what with Bobby becoming an ex-patriot in Poland and all. They have really been reaching for solid ground and their niche in the hub city riots. Basically, from what I can tell, their consistent chaos on stage has become their trademark. They've gotten Chris Pierce from Doc Hopper to play drums, and on this night, they went to it as a trio. I believe Chris was enough of a foundation for them, and Albie and JJ really just went full-force into the punk ecstasy they are known for. We're talking broken bass straps, a kick drum that wouldn't stay put, flailing and faltering guitar chords, screaming vocals, and all the while the boys looked so cute in their GQ suits, ties and sunglasses. I will say it again, the cocks clean up real nice. Their set was so inspiring I proclaimed them the most dangerous band in town — the last real punk band in New Brunswick.

They had us pumped for our set, for sure. And the attention was on us as we struggled to make our exorbitant amount of technology work. Just work. That's all we asked. I was drunk and harassing my bandmates on stage before we even played a single note. Jim Testa of Jersey Beat gave away some free stuff.

The set kicked up and all was well, despite my lax demeanor accompanying a couple shots of vodka. You know, I rarely mix alcohol with performing live because I am just too nervous that I will fuck up the music. But tonight it only made a difference in the fact that I was goading Mike and Alex before the set. My voice was nervous and I could feel it quivering over the PA during the first couple of tunes. I sang louder and thought, "Oh shit — I don't want to do that overly-aggressive because I can't hold a pitch style vocal..." Such an obvious cover-up for nervous vocal chords. I sang through it though. I think it got better as we went along. Who knows? You can't actually hear much from stage. I could hear enough to be nervous though. Alex's whammy pedal took a nose dive during its most important moment — Heaven Grand. We deal with these minor catastrophes as they arise. Then at the end of the set, during our newest song, somehow my guitar chord got pulled from my tuner, and Dave had to just keep playing while Mike, Alex and I struggled to find out why I had no sound. I adore those moments on stage. They are the moments I keep.

It was over. We said our farewells to the hub city locals and packed the ship for our return to the lab. Roadkill littered the route back, and the mechanics were beat from the long night. We dragged Jim Testa with us — good sport! He helped us unload the gear and all he got in return was a chocolate donut and a beaten down futon for sleeping.

These nights I record because as I stated just above, what if? The simple and perhaps sometimes sad truth is, these are the good times. They are the only times. Lately I have caught myself in a worrisome trap of mourning times recently past. I miss the heyday of Joy Division and even a few years ago in our local scene. I have been caught reminiscing about things that are at this point long gone from the moment. Yet, this right now is my youth, my life. While below the surface I often scramble to distinguish that which is meaningful to me and perhaps meaningful on some deeper level, at face value I think what I really need is to be enjoying my life and the work I devote myself to.

I have said and will again say this pursuit of sound is not really about fun. And I still mean that. I don't do it to have fun. I do it because I have something I want you to hear, something I hear deep in the most remote part of my brain and my life. I have a lot to say to you, to anyone who is willing to hear it, do something with it, and then in return give me a piece of themselves. Or just give a piece of themselves to anyone else. It's about that for me. And it is fun. Sometimes it is painful and sometimes it is dull, but it is my life and I think I may be enjoying it afterall.

I believe that sound is one of the ways you experience life. It has become central to my own, and my life is about exploration. These days I am obsessed with exploration of all kinds of connections and time travel. What can I say about all of this? I just don't want to look back someday and realize that all I did in my 20's was worry and feel unfulfilled.

So this record that you may be reading is about Prosolar Mechanics. Please realize that Prosolar Mechanics means something quite specific to me, and it might mean something entirely different to the other mechanics. But we are all saying similar things. To me the Prosolar Mechanic is the technician that seeks to keep the underground viable in the 21st century. A person who tries to create something for the sake of creation, and for no other reason. We watch what it does once it takes a life of its own. There is a difference between a song that you play and a song that plays itself through you. I want to be that conduit for some other life. That's how important the whole damned thing is to me.

The common ground is where we all gather together and do something — anything that signifies that we were once alive and felt something about that. Being drunk in a bar with friends and pouring your heart out has its significance. So you can join us too. Maybe you already have.

So I am sitting in the remote command module of the prosolar emporium of aural exploration. Listening to snippets of the latest attempts in high-quality life enhancement. These are big aspirations, the kind that can feel so daunting that I must stop and wonder at times why I do this to myself.

There is only one reason. I have no choice.

And I have to also ponder this idea of choice when it comes to setting your expectations for what your life should be about. In one moment, it really does feel okay to take things minute by minute and see what paths could reveal themselves to you, so then wait to make decisions about what a next move might be. And so it is with song writing. You follow something instead of leading it — instead of intentionally setting out to find something, you keep your eyes open in the hopes that the thing you didn't expect might reveal itself to you as you give in to some unknown urge.

We stand around in our lab with our instruments slung about our necks almost like a curse, and I feel desperate for direction. And then there are moments when we set out to make something specific happen, only to find that what we didn't know turned out to be more interesting than what we thought we knew.

Does it make sense? It is so much how my life runs sometimes. If I could let go of my contrived and distorted notions of what I should be doing, just a little, then in rushes the nerve to stray from the path. One step after another, you could move towards a real destination. Not one that you set out to reach sometimes, but a new place in the space-time continuum.

Now that's space travel, baby.

We were on what seemed at first to be a simple recon job, plus a little salvage, of an abandoned personnel carrier outside Prowler IV. But strange things started happening when we ran a regen of the ship's logs before doing a memory dump. After that all hell broke loose. I seem to be having difficulty with my temporal framework. The Doc doesn't know what to do either. Suggested I see a psychobiologist when we get back on the surface, or at least somewhere halfway civilized.

For at least ten days I had had an unrelenting headache. During the week I'd been popping Zantac regularly as every meal caused such intense abdominal pain that the mere sight of food, any food, began to inspire serious pangs of fear. The week passed with only one clinically significant panic attack, experienced in the car, on my way to my daily routine. So while I felt concerned that perhaps I was headed back down into some personal pit of malaise-induced hell, I could at least see that I wasn't totally sunk yet. I'm still not exactly sure what to make of it all, but I feel stronger now and ready to take myself apart again.

The mechanics spent almost every evening of the week beginning 11.08.98 preparing for our mission at the Court Tavern. The mission itself was rather unique, as it was the re-introduction of a sickness the likes of which hadn't plagued our town since the early 90's. That was the music of the band Sicker Than Others. Talk about four men, two of which have survived serious head trauma injuries, stripping naked to their essence and spreading their angst like a venereal disease. That's the beauty and joy of Sicker than Others. Raunchy, nasty, funny, intense. You can't take your eyes off of them, wondering what breaches of social conformity might next ensue. And so it was during this mission that Sicker Than Others brought down walls that had taken years of polite social context to construct. And they won.

As for the Stuntcocks, I can't rightly say because I was confined to my bed that evening with such pain in my sinuses that I was sure I'd never survive the show. I missed them, a first for me. This was truly disappointing, as I heard once I arrived to the show that JJ, beloved bassist for the cocks, is making a move to North Carolina and the Stuntcocks will be no more. That was depressing.

I was talking about our week, trying to explain that we had been working very, very hard to put our set back in order after many, many weeks of trying to finish recording and generate new material. It was a much rougher task than we had expected, especially given that I was a literal wreck the entire time. Up until the moment we took the stage I wasn't convinced I'd make it at all.

You see, sometimes when I am trapped between the necessity of earning money and the necessity of pursuing this business of space exploration, it's all I can do just to look down and gaze at my feet. If I were to look up, I think I'd feel as though I couldn't take the speed of life. I feel constantly stuck in some sort of slow motion or time warp, and as though I will arrive at my 100th year on earth feeling as though I still hadn't gotten all the work done. There is too much, and not enough time. There's not enough time to live, it seems.

I sent out a plea, a warning perhaps, to the subscribers of the ProMechX mail list, that on the night of 11.13.98 I was letting go. I was planning a complete dissolution of the self, in the hopes of draining my thirst and my anger and reaching some state of consciousness where I could know that my constant motion in the day to day living had a point of rest. That I could just let myself be. And this is why I remain a Prosolar Mechanic today, despite all the other pressures and pursuits I've undertaken as of late. Because it's through this listening and this production of sound that personally, I can't help but dissolve totally and let my ego — my consciousness — take a well deserved break. In the break you can really experience the moment.

The truth is, sometimes I can see just how ridiculous all of this seems. It feels so complicated, but like good sex, you just have to forget about the constructed realities you've spent your entire conscious life building up in order to keep the chaos of existence at bay. Sometimes, you need to lose it in the chaos in order to keep yourself honest.

The show was good, by the way. Plenty of faces, and many of them new to us. It was definitely not our top performance, given my health and of course, those technical problems that tend to plague us every time we try bringing the sound home. But it was happening — that dissolution crap I was talking about above, and it was happening all around me. In my best hopes, that dissolving doesn't begin and end with me or the mechanics. It spreads like sleep through the hypnotic body, and it takes those within reach to their various points of rest. But it isn't restful. It's just the point of embarkment.

We've nearly finished overhauling the ship, but it's gonna take a while before we've got all the bugs figured out if last Friday is any indicator.

Mike was having a major problem with the thrust balancers right before blast off. I thought he was going to shit when we tried to take off before he figured out that it was just a problem with a limiter switch. Actually, he didn't guess it was the limiter on the red unit until we hit "The Body Spills" outside E's gravitational range, just before the LaGrange point in the manifold. Of course, as soon as he hit the switch, he had to recalibrate the balance under the gun. We could have been torn apart if the acceleration had hit us before he'd finished.

Even before that, Amy had a major reverb malfunction, spraying feedback all over the second section of Cosmopolitan. Accidents like that are what took out the Challenger.

To top it off I had borrowed a quad12 for the gig, which I thought would have worked about the same as mine (both made by Mars Hall) but the Mesa/Ground Control combination didn't interface with it in the same way. I couldn't hear shit, though I was louder than bombs. Suffice it to say, I was way out of tune in "The Body Spills." That song nearly killed us.

Dave didn't seem to have any problems, lucky for us. Lose the power plant and it's all over — nobody can hear you scream.

But after that, we hit the LaGrange point and gravity took over, taking us and about 20 innocent but willing bystanders to the outer reaches of the solar system. It wasn't our best mission, but we did complete it. First in, last out.

All the other bands were great. Elvis '77 ripped the top of my head off with their Orange-driven crunch. Dennis' vocals told me more than I wanted to know about that boy's demented id. Their drum-circle-from-hell routine really rounded out the set. Can't wait to see them at CBGB on Jan. 8.

Aviso Hara were tremendous, par usual. Their fuzzed-out harmonic convergence was like a liquid heroin balm to my week-battered brain. I can't get enough of these boys. Walter is my hero. What the hell chord is that?!

Seething Grey were different than I remembered. Maybe because I'd listened to the CD (MirrorComputerChair) a few times and knew the songs and the sounds better. Their Jawbox-cum-Swervedriver take on the world is different than anything else in Brumfuss. For the life of me I can't figure out why it hasn't caught on. Word on the street is that they're getting some outside help and will be able to jet out of this hellhole, no thanks to any of us.

We have no other missions scheduled: Must finish CD. We really need to play out more to get the live thing to where we want it to be. I don't want to be sitting around in a bar — I want to bend space-time so me and everybody else in the room are hanging out somewhere in the Horsehead Nebula. But it's not really worth doing that until we have some wax to leave behind. L8R.

It has been quite a long time since there's been a field report from this mechanic, and it shouldn't be glossed over or excused in any way. Truth be known, it has been a while since the mechanics have taken to the field and resumed the living portion of our work. We have been locked inside the lab, trying to finish our first comprehensive record of our work to date. The product will undergo a finishing process on 03.14.99 and then be sent to the manufacturer for mass production and we should be able to supply the masses by early April of this year.

But then, this report is about ME Fest, the birthday celebration of Dave Mirelli Jr. We had been working so hard on our record that we almost forgot how to perform our material in front of living human beings. But this was a special occasion, where some of our newer friends from WE Fest would be gathering to break the monotony of space, and we were long overdue for merriment. We prepared for the task for a couple of weeks, amongst job changes, and upgrading the lab. It was quite hairy there for a while, and I don't think there will be any rest for us for quite some time to come.

We drilled, drilled, the procedures until I thought I would be sick. In the end I know it was worth it, but there are those moments when practicing can be such drudgery, when you can't remember how to perform something you've been familiar with for 2 years, and you are practicing after a 12 hour day at your slave job, and you have to wonder if it's still in you. I kept wondering if I still have it in me to beat myself to death like that any longer. There's just so much going on and I really am more of a writer than an entertainer of any sort. Then, I remind myself that this is not about entertainment. It's still about the travel part, and until you are comfortable enough in the procedures, you just can't lose yourself enough to get anywhere.

By 02.11.99 we had finished preparations. Then it was just a matter of getting to the destination in one piece. On 02.12.99, after a long night of adding the last layer of chemical sealant to the floors of the new lab, we stopped into our local port, the Court Tavern, to catch the last few songs of WE Fest cronies The Scott Farkus Affair. They are unbelievable, and I became eager to share an evening with them up in Torrington, CT, where the rest of this story takes place. Also on the bill were Nipple, who deserve an entry here all their own (but I can't go into that now, unfortunately) and Boss Jim Gettys, who forgive me, but I missed entirely as the chemicals I had inhaled all night had finally taken effect on my overextended immune system. I couldn't last the night and went home to bed.

On 02.13.99, I arose rather late and the nervousness began to set in as I started that ritual obsessing over the proper attire for the evening. I've decided that I really should dress better. So I picked some clothing that was appropriate for both the warehouse and the birthday party.

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Tonight for the very first time I wore a suit to the show, and I also wore this tag that I got when I went to see the Space Shuttle launch back in June of 1996. It says "ESA Guest: Amy Jacob" and what it means is, "European Space Agency Guest." Many people asked me what it was, and I told them with a preface.

I explained to a few different people that I have this very rich inner life that revolves around this idea of the Prosolar Mechanic. And I suppose a lot of it isn't even fantasy, but more my way to apply what seems a very relevant metaphor to my experience with music and my inner constructs of life and meaning. So the idea of the ESA tag consciously was to help me role play this space trip a bit, interjecting some reality; ie; memories of the incredible rush I had watching that metal bird pierce the boundaries of human sight into the sky. I wore the suit because I tenuously walk this line between taking myself seriously and writing myself off into the oblivion of day to day living. The suit made me feel good, and I realize how sick it is to buy into the belief that power comes from image.

(I sometimes fear that one day the real Prosolar Mechanics will arrive and show me and my heartfelt attempts at putting together a life that feels relevant to be as half-assed as I worry they — I — have become.)

So it's mere minutes after the show now, and I had to leave my fellow mechanics to clean up the gear because I have to get some sleep in order to perform at my DAY JOB tomorrow, Sunday, morning. I'm far too jazzed up with adrenaline to rest right now. I have to hang on to some of what happened to me tonight.

If the real Prosolar Mechanics were here, what would they say?

Mike and I both had a little too much to drink before we went on, which really is not our style at all. But it happened and I don't think it was so distracting. The show had few hitches, other than the fact that Kirk, live sound genius of the Court Tavern, managed to get my voice incredibly audible through the monitors and I have been so sick this past week that it was all I could do not to waver too much. I can't remember too many other problems, and I'm not sure if that is because I was too buzzed or if I just managed to accept problems as a part of life, and hence they are just normal facets of the experience.

The real Prosolar Mechanics would tell us to go back to the lab. They might say that we try hard and that we do well, but that we need to do more. We need to get closer to each other when we play, and put more of our focus on the moments that take place between us and perhaps a little less on what goes on inside of us individually. But that's so hard for me when I sing. I am beginning to realize that singing, as of late, has become the only place I have left to truly let go of the interface between me and the present tense. What I'm saying is, when the words come out of me they bring some of that inner life into my consciousness, and I get lost there. It's the only time I feel any of this. Sometimes when I am awake I truly fear that whatever it was driving me to this in the first place is drying up. I'm just not as angry as I once was, and I guess I once thought that would indicate a perverted kind of progress. Or perhaps just another phase of clinical depression, where everything overwhelms and not a fucking thing gets done. I hate when that happens.

I think singing is saving me, and I am so pissed that I haven't the time to go deeper.

The real Prosolar Mechanics would say "Find a way."

Aviso Hara are coming into the zone now, and I am hoping that their upcoming cd release will put them in the forefront of a scene that is riddled with too many half-assed bands. Of course, they were as enjoyable as ever tonight and I spent at least part of the evening bending Dave Urbano's ear to tour, with us, some time before I die. That we've got to get out of here.

Instant Death. They came back. I have shared a stage with that incredible act a couple times in another life, in another band, and I must admit flashback type sensations watching them rip through those twisted death-punk ballads. But that was a good thing.

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