Ionrock Dot Org

Yesterday I did nothing but waste my time. I played Max Payne 2 at my brother in-law's apt. and beat it. The question you be asking is "Why did you waste your time on some stupid video game?" I must say, while I am not a "gamer", I do enjoy some games a great deal. I had the opportunity (the experience was positive enough to call an "opportunity"), to play Max Payne and later its sequel. Both engulfed my time during the few days I devoted to beating the games. I have always been a sucker for a good first/third person shooter. I enjoyed Metal Gear solid to no end and would have put it on my resume that I had beaten it in my high school years. Syphon Filter 1 & 2 were are also a lot of fun even though they were not nearly as high of quality. I have had my run-ins playing quake as well along with one experience playing unreal tournament. With this in mind, I was really glad to get done with Max Payne 2. It was playing in mind quite a bit and I really wanted to beat it. It was quite a relief to get a few hours to play and finish the game why everyone took a nap after swimming. I knew I would not have to take it home so that was the best feeling about the whole experience. For my next game...

UME played the "Damn You, Drunk Rooster" benefit show the other day for our friend Travis. I think the url is damnyourooster.com or something similar. Travis puts together a zine that exposes the fleshy underbelly of the Houston independent music scene. He is a very good writer and the show was a lot of fun. Two highlights were seeing some friends play, Sjolander (ex-practice space mates and all around nice people) and Motion Turns It On (current practice space mates and finding to be very genuine and kind folks). They were both really great and I was honored to see them play. We also played a show in Austin on Friday that went pretty well. There were not too many people at the show and the guys at Emo's were less than nice before we played. They did apologize for not being a bit more respectful to us after we played which I took as a pretty hefty compliment. I say this because we take playing shows very seriously and take the relationship between band and club as the highest priority. I got the impression they thought we were just some dumb band (which is somewhat true), so seeing them act differently after we played made me happy we work hard to put on a good show. I don't really blame them for being kind of rude. I have put on a few shows and it is nothing but a pain, so I hope no one thinks badly of Emo's Staff. They were very kind in the end and most importantly, professional which makes music a safer and more positive place in my opinion.

We have a show coming up on Wednesday with Bring Back the Guns (The Groceries), The Octopus Project and a band with dynamos in the name from St. Louis. We are playing first in hopes of getting a nice crowd for the touring band. We did not know about the show until we saw it in the Houston Press which was a very weird experience. If you ever book UME for a show make sure you give us a confirmation email with load in times, playing times and any other info you can think of. If you don't we may just miss the show and we never want to miss a show.