On 11/24/00 I woke up dreaming about Road to Flight. If you don't know what Road to Flight is, then you haven't picked up the latest Land Speed Record release yet, which is okay. There's still time to get your copy. It's a beautiful, sad song, and the title track of their latest release.

Strangely enough, in my dream Tris McCall was the one singing — not Charlie Jamison, whom I'd watched for many weekends throughout the fall of 2000, during our time on the road together. Tris is quickly becoming a NJ songwriting legend in his own right, with his own brand of post-apathy folk ballads about lesser known state politicians and misunderstood government offices. I don't know what Charlie's absence means in terms of this dream, but let's just say I'm glad I've never been known for my premonitions.

In the dream while Tris was singing I was playing acoustic guitar on stage and singing along into the air. No microphone, but it didn't matter. I didn't know the guitar part either, but just kept playing the same chord over and over. It was all I could do at the time. Everyone in the place knew all of the words and so Tris commenced inviting different people to take his microphone and sing the song in his place. Soon Tris was nowhere to be seen, lost somewhere in the crowd encouraging different people to take the microphone. Human after human kept jumping to the stage, singing a few words and then passing the mic on to the next hungry looking would-be-Jamison. I looked down and noticed I wasn't wearing any pants.

Of course I was mortified, but I couldn't stop myself from playing the song. I tried to console myself by telling myself that no one would notice. But then another thought came to this dreaming mind: Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe this half-naked state wasn't as humiliating as I thought, and maybe no one really cared anyway. Maybe this time it wasn't about me, who was paying attention to me or what they thought.

I refocused from my naked ass to Road to Flight. And whether the crowd was upset by my pantslessness or not I never found out, because soon it didn't matter to me. I had more important things to think about. Tris was busy ushering different people up to the stage. It may have been every person I've ever met making an appearance.

Suddenly in my dream a real memory entered. It was the last show we had played with Land Speed Record in Boone North Carolina, when Charlie really was singing Road to Flight. A bunch of us up front jokingly brought out our lighters and soon Charlie's head was bathed in soft firelight. We kept it up throughout the entire song, burnt thumbs and all. From where I stood his head appeared disembodied and unreal. How perfect for a song about hanging oneself. Something that I must have been staving off all evening (or perhaps all year) washed itself all over me during that performance. It must have been profound sadness, but it wasn't a sad moment. It was more like the moment when you realize you once felt bad enough to truly give up, but didn't.

It must have been right about there that I finally woke up, not quite sure what I was feeling except "I gotta go put on Road to Flight again..." And while I ventured into some dream interpretation for Charlie one Saturday morning in Blacksburg VA, when he woke up talking about dead tropical fish, I stop the analysis here. No need to hand everything over, is there? Where's the fun in that?

This was home turf: the welcome home gig for Plug Spark Sanjay with us, ExModels and Nonesuch. We had already seen the Plug Spark boys a week or so before this show, even though they were technically "on the road." Got a call from them one Tuesday night at about 2am from somewhere deep in Virginia, asking if they could stay the night. Well, actually, they left 24 messages of themselves screaming. For the first 2 or 3 minutes, we couldn't tell who the hell it was. After the first ten minutes or so when they hadn't specified why they were calling, we turned the phone off. Apparently, somewhere in the middle of the tenth message they begged us to sleep on our floor; not realizing they were still a good 6 hours from us. The next day we called them back, and well, they were sleeping in a Denny's parking lot somewhere in Maryland.

They did stop by a few days later after driving home from a show in Connecticut. Mind you, they live an hour north of us and could have more easily gone home to their girlfriends and their own beds. But they were "on tour" and going home would have broken the vibe (according to these guys.) I admire their ability to get so far inside the lifestyle sometimes. They arrived at about 4am. I was fast asleep. Alex put them to bed on the living room floor, with fresh colds and sniffling through what was left of the night. Then they were off for another show in some other state. These guys take their mission to the road very, very seriously.

It was about a week later that they came back to New Brunswick to play the Melody with us, and while they were sick as dogs, they were simply wonderful, runny noses and all. Of course, normally they're quite spectacular to see, but all of the time on the road really became apparent here. They sounded, looked, and felt like a nationally touring act. That really got us rev'd to get out ourselves.

ExModels were very much themselves, which is all one could ever hope them to be: an explosion of intellect and sexual tension. Who would ever want anything but that from a band? We were fine as I recall. It was a huge crowd, and as we were on just before Plug Spark we must have been a little rattled. We hadn't played for quite some time, and no matter how good we played there was no question that Plug Spark would be mopping up the floor with us when they came on. Nothing to do but look forward to it... Nonesuch are also a great act. If you know and love the band Failure, these guys will really give you something to appreciate.

The night ended with Plug Spark Sanjay's happy reunion with their girlfriends and wives at the Hilton in New Brunswick, and us carting a ton of people home for late night banter and White Rose take out. One week to the field trip.

The next weekend we hooked up with ExModels and Land Speed Record in Baltimore, MD. We played a small club called the Sidebar. Jeff Bradford, the new Land Speed Record (well, not so new now) drummer has been having a hand in booking shows there, and so thankfully set us up with a show the eve before our long-planned trip back to the home of WE Fest.

While there weren't a whole lot of folks there, it was a fun time. ExModels up first, setting the tone for the evening. They, as usual, ripped through their mind-searing 35 minute set with all of the power and hysteria ExModels are now known for. We were up next, and we did fairly well. To be honest, I can't remember a whole lot of details about the set other than my guitar was so loud (normally, this is a good thing...) that for some reason I just kept playing things totally wrong. It was weird! But then, after all these shows and all these logs there's not much I can say about that. Sometimes in the moment, weird shit happens on stage.

My fondest memory of our set? Mike Kabok standing next to me before we set up our gear on stage, saying "We're never going to fit our gear. We can't do it."
"Sure we are, don't worry about it."
"How?"
"We have to."
"No we're not. We can't fit."
And while it was tight, we of course, did fit, and not really any worse than we've ever fit at the Budapest in New Brunswick. But I find the pre-set anxiety quite amusing — when it's not mine. Didn't you know that I can be a bit of a sinister bitch sometimes? It's not that I don't love you...

We all slept over at Thomas and Pam's afterwards. They made us burritos! And they have great dogs. The next morning, we gathered up Charlie and Jeff of LSR, ate breakfast at the gas station and sped south on 95.

7 or so hours to Wilmington NC for show number two. One nasty stop at a Subway for eats, a few cases of irritable bowel syndrome, Shah shaving in the truck stop bathroom, musical vans and our own private cannonball run.

Firebelly's in Wilmington will always hold a special place in my heart. If you read mechanic's log 5 (WE2K edition), then you know about the emotional/musical triumph Prosolar Mechanics experienced back in May 2000 during WE Fest. Firebelly's is the place where the show came off. Not to mention that despite the fact that we hit the owner's truck with our van in May, he was a sheer pleasure to deal with and welcomed us back to the club with open arms. Not surprisingly, downtown Wilmington is a bit drier in regards to live out of town acts on a Saturday night in November than it is during an indie music festival over a holiday. Nevertheless, the show was quite fun. Not so heavily attended, but our WE Fest friends were out in force, as well as a hearty enough bunch of strangers to send us home satisfied enough.

I mentioned something about irritable bowel syndrome above, and it's worth bringing the topic up again. I must commend ExModels for their performance particularly on this eve. I could see the green creeping into the undertones of their skin long before it was time for them to go on. By the time they were plugged in and ready to go, I think it was all they could do to keep standing. I think it was Subway. We made separate trips home. Land Speed Record are always the first off the launch pad on the way back. We had to have a taste of Saltworks before heading out, as everyone should before leaving Wilmington. I don't know what happened to ExModels that morning, but last I heard they'd made it home in one piece, with many, many pitstops on the way home.

Tell me if this happens to you. You do something that you have really prepared intensely for, and people tell you it's wonderful. You feel good about it, you let that feeling work its way in. For once in your life, you're satisfied. A couple of months pass. Someone has some audio or video documentary, or photos, or sound recording of that thing you'd emotionally feasted on, digested and passed through the colon of self-esteem. You stumble upon it, and wanting some of that good feeling back, you stupidly indulge yourself and sit with whatever documentation you've found. Next thing you know, you're ready to chuck everything into the can, move in with your parents and play video games the rest of your life because you know you never want to face the world again. Well, that's a little bit what Maxwell's was like.

I would have called it the set of a lifetime. It was the last night of the Independent Music Festival. It was Saturday night at Maxwell's. It was a killer bill with two of our favorite bands with some of our closest friends. By the time we took the stage, there was so much energy in the room I thought someone might get electrocuted, and I was pretty sure it was going to be me. I looked forward to it. The room was totally packed, with people up against the front of the stage and reaching all the way to the back of the room. It was honestly one of those shows where I felt, "Ah — this is it. This is what it feels like to really be good at something." We ripped through the set with few problems. I had moments where I felt I truly disappeared inside of the music — the way it was meant to be. I remember specific moments of transcendence where I felt inside of the crowd — hearing hoards of people singing lyrics back to me that have never been printed, published anywhere. I was happy that night.

And the praise? Friends who've seen us a million times were swarming me afterwards, insisting it was simply the best show we'd ever done. That we couldn't have done any better than that. The people rushing up to talk to me was actually so overwhelming that for the first time I actually grabbed my best friend Marty and hid in the basement to collect myself for a while. It was wild, but something I felt I only wanted more of.

Fast forward. In fact, let's hit hyper-drive. It's last week (and we're now talking February when I'm writing this — currently from bed as another day slips into the oblivion of work and getting myself fed) and the Digital Club Network finally has the video of our set catalogued and published on their site. I am always squeamish when it comes to reviewing any recording of live sets. In fact, often I just won't do it unless someone else watches it first and can convince me that it's all going to be okay. Yeah, it's honesty time. If you haven't figured out by now, my sense of self worth while pretty healthy for the most part can become quite delicate at times and is always intensely connected to what I am about musically. I derive a lot of my sense that life is after all meaningful by my creative output across all areas of my life. Music is my art, my soul. Go ahead, laugh. When it comes out sucky, I feel sucky. If I think it's great and upon closer or later inspection realize just how seriously flawed it is, I've got to rip my whole self apart and see what might be pushed that much farther.

So what's the point? Well, I'm getting to that. I courageously began to watch the digital video feed of the Maxwell's set last week. After all, this was the greatest show of my musical career thus far. It had to be passable. I knew it would be much more harsh than the memories — the memories were pure gold. But I was prepared to take it for what it was. The problem is, it was really, really stark and unforgiving. You can go and see for yourself. I only managed to get through a song or two before I realized that the old problems were still there; nervous twitchy vocals that turned sharp because I couldn't hear them well enough in the mix and pushed. And without good vocals, we're shit. I know that. No matter how good the music is, without the voice it's just another independent rock act racing the clock before giving way to a more reasonable, responsible avocation.

So fuck it. I decided it is what it is. But I'm not giving in. I signed on with Don Lawrence, a vocal coach who has been working with Kate from the Faux Monks (friends of ours). He also — name drop, name drop — works with PJ Harvey, so I figured this guy has got to be able to help me. I went in, played him our new material and said, "Don, you've got to help me."

I've always shied far away from formal training when it has come to music. I have little patience, to begin with. That's just honest. Also, I've tried in the past and it just always seemed to confine my thinking in some way. With all the pressures in life and the structured routines involved in pure survival, keeping the creative passages open has become a greater challenge as I've gotten older. More rules, more structure seemed a dangerous thing to me. I have to work twice as hard to open doors, jump out of the box if you will, as I did when I was younger, and I am beginning to believe it's the mind's way of settling in to comfort. It is counterintuitive to fight comfort, but when it comes to creativity, that's constantly what I'm doing. So, settling for the safety of training with a professional vocal coach never seemed like the right thing for me. Until it did.

And they're off. Prosolar Mechanics jump back in the van for a searing trip down the NJ Turnpike to return to the scene of the crime — the Sidebar in Baltimore, MD. This was a cd release party for LandSpeedRecord, and well, if you've read this far I'm pretty sure you know how I feel about their latest cd.

Dear god, it was so long ago now that we played this show it's tough to remember exactly what went on here. Oh, I know my guitar was B L A R I N G. I remember feeling as though the audience seemed a bit stunned by us — I don't mean that either positively or negatively though. It was fucking loud. I remember the Scott Farkus Affair were great, but they didn't have enough time to play. Now, I can't remember if that's because we played too long or not. And I can't remember if they played before or after us. Damn it! This is really getting bad.

I do remember that the place was packed to capacity for LSR, and that their old drummer (Marc Berrong, now of Slow Jets) was really drunk. In fact, I think I was really drunk too. Okay, this recollection is a joke. My apologies.

Kirk Miller was there doing sound. ExModels rocked. LSR now officially a part-time New Brunswick band with their very own drawing power. Was I drunk again? Lots of people to the Lab for after hours that night. Jeff Bradford doing one hell of a Baltimore-on impression.

You know, I could go on but it's just going to be more of the same. I think I'd rather not...

Go Bobby Cardoni!

Bobby is known to many of us in many ways. The Scott Farkus Affair's mascot. The WE Fest Rookie of the Year for 1999. That kid who got arrested for...never mind. But he's also a Virginia Tech student who has this radio show, and a ton of friends who really love live music. So he booked us a show at this house and we went.

We took the day off of work. We had to, really. There wasn't any way we were going to make it 8 hours to Blacksburg in time for a show if we left at 6pm. And if it hasn't come across yet, let it be known that we are fanatics about getting to shows on time. While some of us as individuals are habitually (I might even say sadistically) late for everything, Prosolar Mechanics, the entity, show up on time. Even early. Because nobody wants to tangle with Alex's neurosis over timeliness when it comes to shows. He drives the van, after all. So we get there on time.

At this point, maybe I am getting a little dodgy about spending so many hours in the back seat, I'm not sure. I remember we got pretty damned lost on campus. The directions were a little screwy and it was a scenario where you catch yourself saying, "See, I knew it was a good thing I bought this expensive wireless phone..." but we finally got there. We dragged our whole PA with us too. Alex and Mike set it up while we waited for the other bands to pull in.

Knowing the directions were fucked up, we gradually began to stress over the whereabouts of LSR. See, as far as we knew, they didn't HAVE a cell phone. So there wasn't any way to reach them. Of course, they did have a cell phone — Jeff's — but we didn't know that so to hell with them. But Gus showed up! He drove all the way down that morning, and stopped in to see his brother in Roanoke, then headed out to the show and later, down to Boone North Carolina with us.

Turkish Taffy had played borrowing some of our gear. I liked them a lot, except one of them made some joke about my amp being broken, which I didn't get was a joke, and then after I panicked and calmed back down, the humor was lost on me. Other than that, they were a good band and nice guys. I cannot remember the other band that played, and this is really bad because they were originally from that town and were really popular. The kids were pouring in to see them play. Too bad I can't remember them one iota. I do however, remember that they were also really drunk during LSR's set and making asses out of themselves with the rest of us. That was the coolest thing about them, as I recall.

I think LSR pulled in sometime during the latter half of that band's set, and we were mighty glad they'd made it. Then we played. It was really fun, actually. Some of the kids had our cd or had heard it from Bobby playing it on the radio. Some of them even knew the words! When we were done, LSR ripped through their set. I actually did the cheese act of all time and sang Last Parade with LSR from the stage. Of course, I was totally tickled with myself for that.

It was over and the chicken wings were gone, but we were all still staring. Bobby brought us to an all-night grocery, where we stocked up on junk. We went back to his place; I think there were 10 of us between musicians and friends of — yet we all managed to get a decent night's sleep. It was late-night Play Station and then up for the drive down into the mountains.

Oh of all the most unholy disasters. We'd had such wonderful memories of Boonefest, there was nothing that could have dissuaded us from returning. Lo, had we known about the Pizza Place. Now, I think Karl of the Karloffs had tried to warn us, but we were too far gone to hear his cautions.

— entry ends here. the story was never finished.