I’ve had a Mac for almost two years now but have spent little time actually making things for fun in iMovie.

That changed tonight.

Here’s a trailer for a DVD I’ve been promising to make my brother for five years.

It took no more than a few hours to make.

Look out for the bowlcut!

Talking to my buddy Mike Ross tonight, and he said something about The Hold Steady that was just about perfect. All of you that haven’t had it drilled into your head yet by me (and other detractors), read this, and then give em another spin. Perfect.

“The Hold Steady. They’ve been described as sounding like AC/DC being fronted by a drunk English Lit professor… if you like Springsteen, Thin Lizzy, or the first couple of Led Zep records and don’t mind a very verbose guy rattling off the wildest sort of hard-partying and even harder day-after-partying stories you’ve ever heard, you might want to check them out. They made me believe in rock and roll again.”

Goddamn.

Spin “Stuck Between Stations” here. (via The Hype Machine)

Also, the offer still stands. See them live. With me….Even if you don’t get converted tonight, you gotta admit that the band’s pretty tight.

In the fall of 2004, I started my freshman year of college at Northern Illinois University. I wasn’t a big fan of it – I missed my friends and I wanted to be at home – so every weekend, I went home. During this time, I talked to a bunch of friends back at home into starting a band. I thought it would be fun since I sort of ham-handedly played guitar, and it would be cool to get something together that sounded like my favorite band at the time – Broken Social Scene. So I did what any other eighteen year old at the time would have done. Formed a band.

Dos Ambuli began in late 2004 as the marriage between two types of people: those with musical talent, and those that didn’t. I was in the latter. The musicians of the group of the group were patient – our drummer and multi-instrumentalist tirelessly coached us through songs we tried to put together. I insisted we recorded every jam session. We eventually were able to put together one song called “Small Victory”, which, very succinctly was just that. We then decided to work on some other songs sketches in the following weeks. Near Thanksgiving 2004, however, our practices collapsed and the songs were shelved.

Then, in the summer of 2005, vocalists Brandon Polcik and Kelsey Pierson along with myself had decided to revisit the project with the use of Apple’s GarageBand software. Through one marathon session one evening, we churned out several songs in the program. Again, we shelved these to use at a later time.

In August of that year, Brandon and I re-convened to record more with multi-instrumentalist Keith Pitner and Zach Golden on what would be our finest achievement: the song called “I’m a Baby Dinosaur”. Written by Brandon and friend Chris Lindsey, the song one minute and forty one seconds of pop excellence, chronicling a baby dinosaur that loves watching porn. (We did a couple other songs that day, but seriously, nothing really compares.)

The song caught fire locally, mainly with high school students, leading me to be recognized at Target as the guy in the band that did “the baby dinosaur song”. Awesome.

Anyways, near the end of 2005, I sat down with the recordings and organized them to create our magnum opus, Poop In A Boot, based on a drawing made by Brandon.

So, mere days after I completed my college career, I wanted to share Dos Ambuli with the rest of you.

This is our sprawling avant-punk, twee-pop, indie rock, outsider music classic. Enjoy it. Share it with your friends.

Or just post in the comments about how shitty it was.

Dos Ambuli – Poop In A Boot (2005) (104.3 MB)

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Dos Ambuli is:

Brandon Polcik – Vocals
Kelsey Pierson – Vocals
Brendan Hilliard – Guitar, Background Vocals
Keith Pitner – Keyboard, Trombone, Random other instruments
Luke Mycyk – Bass
Andy Soderstrom – Drums

We’re back with a brand spankin’ new look, just in time for the holidays. Yet again, provided by the incredible John Rork, we have a brand new, more modern look. The old look worked for a while, but with the emergence of new blogging tools, it’s time to move forward.

If you can see, to our right we have a Flickr feed established, and that will be updated any time we add new pictures. Right now, it’s go some of summer travels. I’ll work on putting up a few more later.

Next is our new Twitter feed – where I’ll be posting updates wherever I can – here or on the road. This way, updates, albeit small, will still appear live on this page.

For those who want to know what I’m listening to – a Recent Tracks leading to my last.fm feed is here as well.

As always, enjoy the site, and if you have any questions, or feel like writing anything, please let me know!

Thanks for coming!

This has been a long fucking year. I can’t say I’m sad to see it end, mostly because I can’t wait to see what 2009 will bring!

20. Getting accepted for two terribly exciting internships in NYC.
19. Working at 225 in BR (where I still work, w00t!) due to lack of funds to live in NYC and work at exciting internships.
18. Being a Big Sis in SAI to my dear Meredith.
17. Finding my badass one-person apt within walking distance of campus.
16. Turning 21!
15. Getting closer to vegetarianism (shellfish only).
14. My first crawfish boil!
13. Learning I am not ready to have a credit card.
12. LSU going to the National Championship and winning! in January.
11. Being cast in “For Hearts” includes bonuses of working with the Cranes, meeting my love Courtney and making lovely new friends.
10. “Sex and the City: the Movie”
09. SATC week with Katrina, Allison and Katie and wine.
08. Getting to meet and write about interesting BR locals for my internship.
07. Meeting Brady McNitt.
06. Meeting Brady’s lovely family.
05. Having dear friends hundreds of miles away who I get to miss.
04. Being with Brady for almost 6 months now, and looking forward to more months to come.
03. LOLcats
02. Further understanding how relationships of all kinds work.
01. ZOOEY!