War-N Harrison

Tea with Hungry Lucy #121 (Pink Crispy Water)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:54:27 -0700

Holy Hell it's hot in here! Where's my watermelon? This episode brings many different topics to the table. One of which is the new Hungry Lucy release, "The Teatime Sessions"!! Get one now for fear of embarrassment! War-N found an interesting article about Introvert vs. Extrovert. Don't be mean to the "innie's"! OPM for both HL members was the disc "Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace" featuring many a talented musician. CB comes out of the fashion closet and embraces the girl within by outwardly browsing through the pages of British Vogue. A long-time love that she's kept hidden for all the wrong reasons. Who knew??

A note of great importance is the Bloodwire show in San Francisco, CA on August 30th at Julie's Supper Club. We truly wish we could be there! I hear they are performing many new tunes. How lovely!!!

Other rants and ramblings within this podcast fully represent the members of Hungry Lucy. We are absolutely responsible for topics mentioned on this podcast. Life is worth nothing if you don't stand up for what you believe in! To hear/see more blog-type postings from each individual member go here for War-N and here for Christa Belle. You may even learn how to make a killer Chocolate Cake!

Until next time... be more expressive!

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Christa Belle dancing for David Lynch! (thanks Tyim)

David Lynch - Funny Moments 2

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"The Teatime Session" (digital version now available)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:14:59 -0700

By popular demand, we are making "The Teatime Sessions" available via digital music channels. The release is already online at, Amazon MP3 Store, Napster, Rhapsody and Lala. iTunes (Worldwide) and eMusic will follow in the coming weeks (if they aren't already there).

The Teatime Sessions is a collection of 9 live recordings made during the Tea with Hungry Lucy podcast over the past year and a half. These are nicely mixed & mastered versions of the original recordings and sound much better than the low quality podcast MP3.

TRACKLIST:

we won’t go (#66, mar 25, 2007)
good girl (#98, jan 13, 2008)
love vigilantes* (#115, may 25, 2008)
open window (#57, jan 14, 2007)
rebirth (#93, nov 11, 2007)
shine (#113, apr 27, 2008)
softly (#118, jul 6, 2008)
stay (#116, jun 18, 2008)
to kill a king (#110, apr 7, 2008)

all songs by c belle/w harrison except * originally by new order

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

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Tea with Hungry Lucy #120 (kerli and blunt)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:29:12 -0700

In episode 120 of Tea with Hungry Lucy, Christa and War-N give us all the juicy details of their recent show with Thoushaltnot at The Dock in Cincinnati. War-N talks about keeping himself to himself, and then feels he's contradicted himself. Christa raises an interesting issue whether it's better to coexist with people of differing views or group together with like-minded people. That got War-N thinking far too hard. What are your thoughts on the matter? Christa also speaks indirectly to Anji Bee of Lovespirals regarding the song "Storm" and a shared experience.

Other People's Music for this week include:

Kerli
James Blunt
Stripmall Architecture (new project from former Halou members)

Folks in San Francisco, don't miss Stripmall Architecture @ Cafe du Nord on Aug. 13th

Which song shall we play on the next podcast?

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Tea with Hungry Lucy #119 (the especially windy city)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:28:18 -0700

Christa and War-N return to the airwaves with no video streams to distract them this week. Christa shares the progress of the vegetable garden while War-N stays indoors. The duo talk about their recent trip to Chicago to see Yazoo perform live (War-N so totally blogged about it). CB & W jump into prep mode for the upcoming show at The Dock with ThouShaltNot (July 31st) and also tell us about a special live album they'll be selling at the show? Can't make the show and want one? Tell us about it!

Other mentionables:

Would you pay ten short dollars for nine delicious live songs?

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Bastille Day with Yazoo

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:15:53 -0700

This past Monday (Bastille Day) we went to Chicago to see & hear one of my early influences (Yazoo) perform. The team of Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke have embarked on a "Reconnected" tour after disbanding 25 years ago (bloody hell). It was quite an historic event given Yazoo's short career of 2 years and the major influence on many bands that followed. Vince Clarke, of course, went on to form the hugely successful duo of Erasure. Although Erasure also had a large influence, in my opinion, their songs have never had the depth of Yazoo's material.

To make the concert even more special, my brother was there with me. He (David) and I had a synthpop duo (Studio II) during the late 80s/early 90s and it's fair to say that without Yazoo, we probably never would have existed. I think we covered nearly every Vince Clarke penned song at some point. So, it was major groovy to be sitting next to him as Yazoo took to the stage after all these years. Goosebumps-a-plenty! It has inspired me to seek out and digitize all of the Studio II material and get it online. History is too important to simply sit in boxes in the basement! Watch for synthpop goodness soon.

The concert was excellent and featured many "true to the original" versions of classic Yazoo tracks as well as a few updated (and up-tempo) versions. Alison's voice has never sounded better and she genuinely seemed to be having a great time. Vince Clarke was, well... Vince Clarke. I think I saw him smile once, but he's not the most animated of fellows! The packed house at the Chicago Theatre was extremely enthusiastic, prompting me to ask David, "Where were all these people when we were playing?". In his usual witty way, he responded, "Chicago". :)

Anyway, a fun time was had by all and a much needed boost to the creative juices followed. That is all.

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Tea with Hungry Lucy #117 (The L Word)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:55:50 -0700

Well, despite HL's efforts to stream the podcast live, we had technical difficulties outside of our own control. Thusly, the podcast will not have a live video stream for this episode. Sorry :/ It's all Leo Laporte's fault! ;)

But, the duo still had lots to talk about. Work on the new album is chugging along nicely, finally! With no release date a of yet, CB & W are working away on brand new tunes. One of which, 'Just Imagine', was just completed and only needs a good mixing. Who knows how many tracks the new album will have. At this point, it's best to just keep on doing what they're doing! OPM's included for the week were Christa's pick of Frisbee, thanks to Grant and his Three From Leith podcast, and War-N's pick was the new album 'Nine Heavens' by Niyaz which is due out next week. All absolutely great stuff!! CB also chatted about the music store located in Louisville, KY called ear-X-tacy. Frisbee sells his cd's, and vinyl, there directly. If you live near the Louisville area, you should go check it out! Also, you can order from them online here!

Until next time, be nice to others more than you think you should! You don't always know the other side of things.

Toodloo!

Other fine examples of good "brick-n-mortar" indie record stores are:

Shake It Records in Cincinnati, OH
Amoeba Music in San Francisco/Hollywood, CA
Rasputin Music in multiple locations in the Bay Area, CA

What song should we perform next time?

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Here's the TWHL theme music, for Jody ;)

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A Day in the Futuristic Space Car

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:19:21 -0700

Today (Sunday) was spent working on a new song (called “Just Imagine”) that started life as “Futurist Space Car”. We actually played bit of it on TWHL #102.

I spent today cleaning up the arrangement and we just recorded Christa’s final vocals about 30 minutes ago. The song started life as a little drum loop from Matilda (our affectionately named Alesis Micron) and a somber, yet spacey, synth pad. If memory serves correctly, Christa wrote lyrics on the spot for this one and we recorded scratch vocals right away. The lyrics and whole feel of the song speaks of life(?) after we are all gone for this world. Christa’s melody is really beautiful in contrast to the cold music bed. With this in mind, I decided that Christa’s lone voice should be the only real human element to the song. I added some very mechanically played electric piano… playing only the first and fifth of each chord. I’ve always liked the way fifths leave enough space in a chord progression for the melody to really dictate the tone. Is it major or minor? There is also a certain sterility to this method of harmonizing that lends itself well to this song. For a nice lift (but not too much) on the chorus I added some very stylistic TR-808 and CR-78 cymbals. Nothing screams early electronics like these percussive sounds. There’s a 8 bar break between verse and chorus that needed a little something. So I added a very cold sounding CS-80 synth (well, a virtual version of it). The song ends (quite dramatically I think) with just Christa’s voice and the ambient synth pads, so a nice crescendo is needed to build up to this. The crescendo still needs a bit of work. I’m thinking (and Christa agrees) that some strings might fit the bill here. That will add another human element besides the voice I suppose, but what are rules other than things to break?

Sorry if I’ve been a little too music theory/tech geek in my description here. I just wanted to document what we’ve been up to today… in the only language I know. All-in-all… a good day of creative work. It’s been along time since I’ve had such a productive and rewarding day, musically. So I wanted to share.

ShareThis

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Tea with Hungry Lucy #115 (Dedications and Speaking Disorders)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:09:37 -0700

At last, the (triumphant?) return of Tea with Hungry Lucy! In honor of Memorial Day, Christa and War-N kick off the episode with a live performance of the New Order song "Love Vigilantes" (originally recorded for the "True Faith" album). Some explanation of the unplanned Hiatus follows in amongst CB & W's difficulties with forming simple sentences. War-N talks a bit about the film "A Mighty Heart" and how if affected him and Christa talks about beautiful visual impact of the film "Perfume". Other People's Music chatted about was the song "New Soul" by Yael Naim (from her self-titled album) and the album "Dreaming of Revenge" by Kaki King. War-N learned about Kaki on the excellent podcast "World Cafe: Words and Music (Feed)". The podcast rounds out with "My Beloved" (from the album "To Kill a King"), dedicated this week to our new nephew, Micah.

What Hungry Lucy song would you dedicate to a loved one?

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Mowing Down Some Grass

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:44:26 -0700

Human nature, at least many people's, is to always suspect that the grass is greener on the other side. We take the parts of our lives that we don't like and focus on how great life would be if the exact opposite were true. The trouble with that bad habit, is that it never goes away. Life is a compromise. No matter what possessions you have, what job you have or what relationships you have... there will always be a downside. There is a fine line between striving for better and never being happy. It's easy to recognize what is wrong in our lives, but not always so easy to recognize the wonderful experiences and people in our lives. Find what makes you happy in your life and totally dwell on it... go on... just roll around in it! Take all that energy you spend wishing for something more, and bask in everything great you have going on right now.

It's working for me... right now... and I aim to keep it that way.

Signed, one moody bastid ;)

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Life with Hungry Lucy #005 (Sometimes… you just gotta reboot)

nobody@vox.com(War-N) — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:10:48 -0700

“Sometimes… you just gotta reboot”.
In the 5th installment for Life with Hungry Lucy, Christa and War-N tell us about starting the song “Erase Her” from scratch when it just wasn’t working.

Life with Hungry Lucy #005

Higher quality, iPod-happy version (H.264, 640 x 480

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