leftovers

Tomorrow at 6:20 p.m. I will be leaving this continent and traveling by air to Europe, to the little windswept island they call England! I am so excited to be returning to London, my favorite of all cities (that I have been to)! This trip is my third to the U.K., and as such there will be some old traditions and new discoveries. As with my previous two visits, I will be seeing my favorite band - The Human League - live in concert. In 2003, my first journey, I rode a bus up to Sheffield to see them play City Hall in their hometown. I was fortunate enough to go back in 2012, and got to see them twice; once at Brighton Dome, and back in London at Royal Albert Hall. This time, I will be flying up to Glasgow to see and stay with my friend David. He and I will be going to see them perform at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and afterward his boyfriend is joining us at Hard Rock Cafe for a late show of Jo Callis, a former member of Human League who wrote or co-wrote some of their most memor...

It's been almost a week since the election, and my self-imposed Facebook exile is about to come to an end. I've actually really enjoyed being away from it all, and frankly, I am not looking forward to returning. However, I have several pages that I manage as part of my job, as well as my band's page, and I need an active account in order to administer these. I'm still trying to decide if there are additional measures I would like to take upon my return, such as increased security settings, unfriending/blocking certain people, and removing previous content from my page. To refresh those who may not have seen my previous blog post, or do not follow me on other social media (I'm on Twitter, Google+ and Instagram still!), I just had to take a break from FAKEBOOK and all the fake news articles shared there, as well as the corresponding reactions and all the emotions related to this horrible election. Also, I haven't felt like "connecting" to people, or ...

I never wanted to have to write this blog post and I don't really even want to do it, but I feel that I must to mark today and remember this awful feeling. The election results from last night have shocked, angered, and hurt me. But most of all, they broke my heart. My entire life, I have always proudly been an optimist. I have always striven to see the good in everyone, and in every situation. I have always felt that things would work out OK. Even when I have had my heart broken before, I have rebounded quickly and forgiven those who have hurt me. Today, I do not feel like forgiving, or moving on. I feel like I no longer have any faith left. I feel like I want to blame everyone, and that I don't want to trust anyone. I don't feel like I want to be connected to this society anymore. It is an awful feeling. I am running out of fingers to point and places to blame, but today on the top of my list is social media. I have been such a fan of social media, apparently to the...

I'm not one to complain about living in Los Angeles. I have been here now for over 16 years, and while at time I daydream about moving somewhere else, for the most part I am perfectly happy here. However, there are certain things we Angelenos love to complain about, and when you get down to it, what we're really complaining almost all comes down to how spoiled we are. Here's the top 10 things that suck about life in the city of Angels! 10. Traffic. Yeah a lot of people would put this at the top of their list. But if you're fortunate enough to be driving a car in Los Angeles, you're already doing better than millions of other people. You are located in a city of dreams, full of potential, with possible fortune around every corner. And you have somewhere to go! Someone wants to see you! So quit bitching and leave the house early enough to get where you're going on time, get a book on tape, learn a foreign language, or call your mom (hands free, on speaker phone...

This is a picture of a little playground, located at 111 E. 4th Street in Hays, Kansas. 17 years ago, there was a house here, and that house was all decorated for Halloween, with pumpkins on the porch and all kinds of skeletons, spiderwebs and such inside. It was the house that my brother and I lived in, and it would be our last Halloween living in Kansas. It is so strange to look now and see that it's all gone. I've lived in quite a few houses during my lifetime, and most of them are still standing somehow. This house was pretty special though, as my brother and I lived here our last two years in Kansas, while I was graduating from college, and so many good times were had here. Seeing it now, it's like my place in Hays has been erased. Not that I ever want to go back, but now it's almost as if I was never there.

I started working on what would become "Mixed Signals" back in 2011, right after I released my debut. In fact, by the end of summer that year, I had a CD-R that I listened to in the car that had most of the album demoed. And then I changed my mind. Myles had asked why I wasn't recording live drums. I tried to explain that I didn't know how to record or mix drums. And then, I met Jarod and asked him to join the band and had to find something for him to do. So we wrote new songs that would utilize all five of us, and we figured out ways to record drums, find our harmonies, and sound like a band together. Finally, five years after "It's Never the Way You Imagine It," we are releasing the first true Traitors album. In keeping with tradition , I'll first include that original track list of what I was calling "Art Damage." 1. Angels in Paradise 2. Lover + Lass 3. Quickie 4. Cocksure 5. Here's the Thing 6. Meet Me in Atlantis ...

I will be posting more about this soon, but for now, here's the announcement: My band's first album together will be coming out on 7/22/16!!! This follows up my debut solo album, "It's Never the Way You Imagine It," which was released in April, 2011. Why did this one take so long? Well, it's a full band album, so instead of me just making music on my computer whenever I wanted to, I had to learn how to do things like record drums, mix drums, produce tracks with contributions from at least 5 very busy people, and then tie it all together! I'll be going into more detail about each track, but for now, you can pre-order the album and hear our new single "All Mixed Up" here: <a href="http://devintait.bandcamp.com/album/mixed-signals">Mixed Signals by Devin Tait &amp;amp; The Traitors</a>

After having a little Katrina and the Waves YouTube dance party and then getting some laundry out of the dryer, I had this great idea that I hadn't had before. It's such a good idea I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it! I wanted to blog about all the rooms that I have called "mine" throughout the years! The first room I remember was in my parent's little farmhouse northeast of the village known as Paradise, Kansas. My room was right next to theirs, it had a double window on the western wall, wood paneling on the walls, and a short pile carpet that had sort of art deco-lite geometric patterns with reds, blacks, yellows and other colors I think. By this time, my little brother Brandon was born and we had bunk beds. I often imagined that I saw faces, objects and scenes in the patterns on the paneled walls. Remember this room cause it comes up a few more times! Sometime when I was four or five, I decided I wanted to grow up and have my own room. My da...

There are so many things I've been wanting to blog about, but even with all the technology we have to make things like posting a blog "easier" it still always seems like extra work on top of all the things I HAVE to do. So I don't get around to it. In the meantime I figured I'd just do a quick summary of some of the things I've been up to, and hopefully soon I'll have the time to expand upon some of them. First, a little over a month ago, Dylan and I took an easter road trip to Las Vegas and Palm Springs, just to get out of town. The impetus behind the trip was that was got tickets to see Love, the Beatles show by Cirque du Soleil, in Vegas as a wedding gift. So we left work a little early on Good Friday and drove through the desert, having to make a couple of last-minute detours on the way, finally arriving in Sin City around 10:30 p.m. We checked into our room at the gorgeous SLS Hotel and did a little wandering and slot machines. The next day we took ...

This one's a doozy! I can't think of another band I follow that has been so prolific and consistent. Since the release of their debut album "Fire" in 2003, the band has pretty much released an album every year (with the exception of a two-year delay between "Fire" and sophomore album "Señor Smoke"). At times, I have thought of Electric Six as my favorite band. Usually these times are at the end of one of their euphoric live shows, of which I have witnessed an average of at least one per year. Other times, I lose track or interest briefly, so some of the albums I had to really revisit in order to rank them. I do own most of these, but there are a couple that I never ended up buying but rather chose to just stream. Out of 12 albums (including live disc "Absolute Pleasure"), I own physical copies of 9 of them as well as several CD singles, 7" singles, and even a 7" picture disc ("Radio Ga Ga"). For this countdown, I act...

For the third year in a row, Devin Tait & The Traitors woke up extra early to perform for the runners in the Los Angeles Marathon. To be honest, I didn't have all that much enthusiasm in the beginning and almost didn't even apply for it. We are down one member since Brandon has departed, and also the marathon is just a lot of work! Plus, they moved the date up by nearly a month to coincide with the US Olympic marathon time trials. However, they finally accommodated our request to perform in Hollywood rather than Echo Park, and were even able to locate us right in front of my job's office. This made it much easier, since we had a place where we could store our stuff the night before, and electricity and bathrooms at our disposal. Also, we were roughly nearer to mile 11 than mile 5 so it was a slightly later start time. Since we don't have a regular bass player at the moment, I had to hire Steve, who performed with us at Fubar, and at Record Parlour and Coutu...

The Thompson Twins. They were my very first favorite band. I've been with them through the ups and downs, and the fall before last I finally got to see their songs performed by Tom Bailey, the frontman who was most responsible for the band's actual music anyway. Of course I would have preferred to see the whole band live, but it was really more than I ever imagined would happen anyway and was an amazing experience. Collecting these albums was a journey for me, the first of many similar journeys as I found and fell in love with other bands throughout my life time, but the Twins will always be the one that started it all! 10. Ether (Babble) 1996 The second and final release by Babble, the band the Thompson Twins eventually morphed into, is not really a bad album per se.  It's very chill and ambient and therefore easy to throw on in the background, but as a result it's just not that memorable. The only songs that stand out for me are "Hold the Sky," ...

This is the 9th year I have ranked my top 10 favorite songs here on my blog! I'll have to do something really special to celebrate next year's countdown (note to self). This was a fun year for music, with lots of new releases, some new bands I discovered, thanks to Spotify, and some great concerts that I'll never forget! Before we get into the top 10 songs that made my boat float this past year, we'll start again with honorable mentions and then a brand new section this year with my favorite local bands! Honorable Mentions "Uma Thurman" - Fall Out Boy. FOB returned in a big way the past couple of years. This was a great song with a sample from "The Munsters" theme song. Somebody New - Joywave. Loved the music video! All of You - Betty Who. Betty never fails to disappoint. Sunscreem - What Will the Sun Say. Techno-rock band from the 90's returns with a surprise comeback album. Local Sounds Island Apollo - Lion Eyes. These guys are great...